Saying that Hermione's heart had dropped when she inhaled the love potion was an understatement. There was not a doubt in her mind that it was, in fact, Amortentia. All the smells were there, the same ones she had inhaled with James nearly two months ago.

The reasons why it smelled the way that it did Hermione would reevaluate later, but the most important thing was that this bottle contained the most powerful love potion in the world. One drop could give a person such a lust for someone else, in the same way that the imperious curse places a person under complete control. Using it was almost as unforgivable as the Unforgivable Curses themselves.

Her heart hurt for Emma. What else would Peter be using Amortentia for other than on Emma? The whole school was utterly shocked when he and Emma actually got together, this may explain it.

The bottle was half empty at the moment. How long has Peter been with Emma? A little over a month now? How long would the potion have effect on Emma?

Hermione set the bottles potion back down on the table alongside the notebook and the diadem, thinking about how she could get Emma out of this situation as soon as possible. Sure, she barely knew the girl, but she deserved to be helped. Anyone deserved to be helped out of a situation such as this.

She took a step back. In front of her, lay virtually everything she needed. Finding this was a huge step, but there was so much to unpack, so many different ways to go from here. How do they all connect? What value does each object hold? What kind of dark magic was being used in the diadem? Peter is obviously a spy, she knew that, but how would he be getting the Order's information to Voldemort? And lastly, why would he need to use Amortentia on Emma in the first place? What is her purpose?

What did it all mean?

It was all so much, but the alarm going off on her wristwatch took Hermione out of her deep waves of thought. She had five minutes before Peter's shift was up.

So, Hermione left. Everything she needed was in her head: she couldn't take anything, yet, at least. She needed Peter to believe that she wasn't in the know, not that he was suspicious of her in the first place. He needed to believe he was safe, so Hermione could piece everything together as it unfolded before her eyes.

With the invisibility cloak on, she departed from the triangular door and watched it disappear just as she did. Quietly, she progressed down the stairs and made her way to the common room, passing the hospital wing and seeing Lily anxiously waiting for Peter's shift to end and for her's to begin. Hermione smiled. Maybe, she would skip out on the visiting hours and leave Lily and James to themselves. It was the least she could do back in this time.

Removing the invisibility cloak in a nearby corridor and hiding it away, Hermione passed the hospital wing again, informing Lily that her homework would keep her from visiting hours today, and headed to the library.

Instead of actually getting her assignments done, however, Hermione got her hands on every dark magic book that she could without having access to the restricted section, and nothing. It was bone dry, and her hopes of figuring out the properties of the diadem began to shrink.

She left the library in a funk. And for the the next three days until the weekend finally came, Hermione's mind was once again crowded with her thoughts. One minute she would be thinking about the new situation or whatever that was going on with Lily and James, then Emma's dire problem, and the dark magic of the diadem, and...

She could go on for what seemed like ages.

But out of these heavily weighted problems that it was her job to fix in some way, the most pressing of all wasn't in fact a problem. Or at least she didn't know if it was a problem, or what exactly it was in the first place. But she did know that it was related to Sirius.

That quivering feeling that rose in her stomach every time he let his teeth show, every time they made slight eye contact at breakfast, during each nerve-struck conversation during midnight Astronomy class, even that one moment of vulnerability when her hand was place gently on his back: it all left her in so much confusion.

Every one of those pressing problems that didn't have anything to do with Sirius, however, she could control. Her skills in analysis and problem-solving led her to be exceptionally well with "problems" such as those (Why else would Dumbledore have chosen her for this mission?), but Sirius was someone she couldn't just analyze. Why she acted the way she did around him wasn't just something she could analyze. And it drove her crazy.

Sirius, on the other hand, was in a similar boat to the new girl. Harper's arrival truly had caught Sirius off guard: going into his seventh year, he wasn't expecting to become friends with someone just as good as the best people he knew. He felt less anxious about being from a family that had burned his name for choosing the good side. In the beginning, he hoped for her to be good, and now we knew that she was good. Everything about her, her wit, drive to succeed, bluntness, intelligence, compassion, he could go on. And that's not even considering her appearance, which was just the surface of who she was.

As time passed, Sirius, unlike Hermione, began to figure out exactly what these thoughts, feelings, rather, for Harper meant to him. He knew that he wanted to be more than just friends; he wanted her to be more than just another good person in his life. He wanted more.

But he didn't know a single thing going on in her head, and it drove him crazy.

Their next potions class the following Monday only made both Sirius and Hermione more confused about their thoughts on each other. Like any other Monday, Professor Slughorn had brewed a particular potion that the class would be studying for the week. The singular cauldron lay on the center table of the classroom, most of the students eager to learn about this week's potion.

With most of the class present and in their seats, Slughorn began class.

"This week, we will be studying Amortentia, also known as—"

"The most powerful love potion in the world," spoke Sirius, walking in late to the class and grabbing the attention of everyone in the room. Hermione's face grew red.

"Nice of you to join us, Mr. Black," Slughorn stated.

Sirius, a performative smile across his face, blurted out, "my pleasure."

"Actually, Mr. Black, it's your lucky day," Slughorn inquired, "you'll be the first student to smell our potion of the week.

"Amortentia's smell will reveal what one most desires, or in some cases, can represent a single person one desires the most..."

As the professor rambled, Sirius stood apt at the front of the classroom. He shot Hermione a smile with his eyes with his interesting burst of energy that came from showing up late to class. Brows very slightly raised at the now-nervous girl, Sirius almost tuned out when Professor Slughorn told him to take a brief whiff of the potion.

So, acting naturally in obnoxiousness, Sirius practically shoved his nose into the potion, earning a chuckle or two from the rest of the class.

"Mmmm," he inhaled, "It smells similar to the library, like old books or parchment or something," he started.

"What else?"

"And strongly of ginger. A bit of roses as well."

The redness having not faded from her faced, Hermione blushed even while he spoke. It seems...familiar.

"Thank you, Sirius. You may call on another student to smell the potion, and we'll go until the entire class has experienced their scent of Amortentia."

"Oh, James, you're up."

Finally back in classes after his Quidditch injury, James mosied on up to the cauldron, knowing what his version of the potion smelled like already. When he said that it smelled of "treacle tart, almonds, and mint," Hermione knew it was Lily without a doubt. And a part of Lily couldn't help but wonder if he, who she once believed to be the most annoying person at Hogwarts, was smelling her in that potion.

One by one, the rest of the students got to share their scents with the class.

Lily announced that her scent consisted of wood, gillywater, and fire whiskey, to which James took a great liking. Dorcas called out chocolate, rain, and ink as her scents. Remus' scents complimented her own, with roses, caramel, and wet grass being his.

Though most of them, including these, seemed run of the mill, Hermione was completely caught off guard when Emma Vanity was called to the front of the room. After smelling the potion, a confused look rose to her face. Emma sniffed deeper again, before whispering out, "I can't smell anything. There, there's no scent."

And so, the class as a whole grew just as confused as Emma, while the gears in Hermione's brain began turning. Why couldn't she smell anything? It must be related to Peter's use of Amortentia on her, there's no other reasonable explanation for why she can't smell anything.

Slughorn's nose turned up. "That's rather peculiar," he spoke in his best calm voice, but Hermione noticed a rather invested look on her fake uncle's face.

"Um, Harper, you can go next," said a now-nervous Emma as she paced back to her seat, wondering what was wrong with her nose. Peter remained motionless as she did so, and it rattled Hermione from the inside.

But having been called, Hermione stepped to the front of the room, smelling the powerful potion now for the third time in the past two months.

"I smell sugar, fire, and wet dog," she spoke out directly, her thoughts more focused towards Emma than herself in this very moment, despite being curious of Sirius' scents as well.

Sirius himself, however, who had been watching Harper at the front of the classroom, was particular intrigued by what she called out in the same way that she was for his.

Sugar and fire could mean anything, but wet dog? How on earth could someone smell wet dog as something they are most attracted to?

Sirius wouldn't let his thoughts run any more wild than this, it couldn't possibly be what he was thinking in the back of his mind. That he was the wet dog in question.

But the nerves from this potential thought coursed through his veins once Harper took her seat next to him again. Slughorn's closing remarks about the potion, however short they were, seemed to last forever for both Sirius and Hermione, who's heads were occupied with the scents that the other possessed. The ricocheting "what if's" stayed with them until nightfall.

Deep in the girls' dormitory, Hermione distracted her overly-occupied mind by bringing up what Lily had smelled in Potions class.

"There's no way what you smelled wasn't James!" Hermione exclaimed, temporarily over the moon for her best friend's future mother.

Marlene added, "Oh, I agree. She definitely smelled Potter in there, the whole class could tell, even him!"

"What?" she started, playing confused before blurting out in embarrassment, "was it really that obvious?"

The squeals in the girls dormitory were no short of excessive, and Hermione's heart, for a moment, was full. The light in Lily's eyes over the thought of James made her so happy.

"But, now what about you Harper," Lily said, changing to topic of conversation off of herself.

"What about me?"

"You know, Sirius smelled ginger."

"..."

"Oh come on," she playfully spoke, "we all know that you're the only one who takes ginger with their butterbeer."

"Well, I dunno about that..." Hermione answered back nervously. She hadn't yet gotten the chance to digest exactly why she was so intrigued by what Sirius had smelled, but apparently, the time for that was now.

"It's just a thought," Lily snickered, her eyebrows moving up and down sarcastically and aggressively.

"I, um, second that thought," added Alice goofily. It was only a matter of time before the entire room of girls burst out in laughter.

And though a great smile was perched upon her face, Hermione couldn't help but wonder, what if she was what Sirius smelled?

Across the hall, a sleep-deprived Peter groaned at the noise. "What could possibly be keeping the girls up this late? I'm exhausted," he spat.

"I dunno Peter, maybe they're talking about how James and Lily practically confessed their love for each other in potions class today, I mean, they literally described each other," blurted a laughing Remus.

James blushed, a smile peering through he cheeks when he said, "Well, I am now extremely grateful to smell of wood, apparently."

"Can't forget the firewhiskey," added Sirius.

"Yeah, but we already knew that one," James laughed. Though silly in nature, James was both eased and excited about even the possibility of Lily being attracted to him through and through.

And with that, Peter grumbly put out the room's light. Remus' eventual snoring gave signal to the rest of the room that the time to rest has begun. But before laying their heads to rest, James whispered one last remark to Sirius.

"You know, I bet I know what the girls were really talking about."

"What, Prongs?" Sirius groaned, just as Peter had done minutes before.

"How Harper smelled you in the Amortentia. Seriously, wet dog? Sugar and fire? She's practically mixing your natural odor and your cologne, Sirius."

He paused, wary of what to say next. "Eh, I didn't think about that," he blatantly lied, just barely seeing the face of James in the dark giving him a not-so-convincing look in return.

"Whatever you say, Mr. Ginger," he grinned, before returning his head to the pillow.

And while the rest of the boys fell asleep with ease, Sirius couldn't help but stay up in thought about Harper, which seemed to become a more recurring theme of the night. Sugar, fire, and wet dog. James was right, those three scents accurately describes Sirius more than any other could, and the thought of that scared him.

Of course, he had been pondering over what exactly his feelings for Harper meant, but in no way had he thought about what to do if she felt the same way. And though the chances seemed slim to him, he found himself wondering, what if he was what Harper smelled?

A/N: thanks for 650+ reads!!! you guys are amazing!!

A/N (UPDATE 5/1/21): extra long chapter today!!! yay! ok anyway so this past week i watched shadow and bone on netflix and i'm obsessed! ben barnes is amazing and since i have him cast as sirius in this book, watching him as an actor in shadow and bone can help me better write sirius' character!! also can we PLEASE talk about how attractive ben barnes is?? AND he can sing. what a man.

secondly, instead of deleting my old work and pasting in my rewritten stuff, i've just decided to make new parts for them so i can still have/laugh at it later. that's why everything's down to zero again! it's just a little easier to see my progress if i do it this way.

anyway, i can't believe this story has gotten so close to 200k! i literally cannot believe it. i'm hoping with summer coming up, i'll have even more time to write some more! i'd like to finish this story before i go to college in the fall but we'll see, lol. thank you!!    - callahan.