They'd utterly failed at the Amortentia.

Sirius sniffed as deeply as he could, until he was light-headed and a bit dizzy, but all he could smell was the ink and chocolatey parchment of Remus from the seat beside him. Well, sort of. Moony wasn't exactly in the seat - he'd slumped over the desk in defeat, an actual puddle of failure.

"It's official," Remus said, voice muffled by the desk. "I'm so bad at Potions I managed to make yours screw up." He thumped his head against the desk. "This is ridiculous." Another thump. "And I am not ridiculous." He paused. "Except for on Thursdays. We get mousse on Thursdays."

Sirius poked at the cauldron with the end of his wand. He couldn't figure out what was wrong with it - the thing actually looked okay. Textbook, in fact. "Here, you smell it. Pick something up with that werewolfy nose of yours."

Remus groaned and gave his friend the obligatory smack across the back of his head, but bent over the cauldron and took a deep breath anyway. All he could smell was a faint whiff of burnt hair and wet dog wafting from over where Sirius was furiously back-adding ingredients, trying to see where they'd gone wrong.

"Sorry, Pads," he said. "I don't think we managed it."

A/N: Oh, and my review replies only work if Mars is in retrograde. SO if I don't give you some love back, it's because my laptop hates me, not because I don't want your babies.

Ahem.

Forget I said that.