Remus set his things down at an empty place and pulled out his own textbook.

"Getting a head start?" he asked with a faint smile.

"A little bit," Cat said, glancing up from her textbook. She raised an eyebrow slightly when she saw he looked scruffier than normal. "Everything alright? Looking a little rough there."

"I'm fine," Lupin told her. "James and Sirius just think they're funny and can get away with things." He rolled his eyes.

"I'm sure," Cat said. "Everyone's heard of what those two can get up to." She made one last note in her book and reached back to twist her pencil into her hair. "So, I've already figured out what I need for my choice of potion, I was just working out when I need to collect some of the ingredients." She grinned a bit. "Those fun 'collect at eighteen minutes after midnight four days before the full moon' kind of ingredients."

"Ah, those." Lupin smiled a bit. "Those are always fun. Fortunately, I don't think we'll have trouble getting permission to be out and about to gather said ingredients."

"No, that won't be a problem," Cat agreed. "Did you pick the potion you wanted to do?"

Remus nodded. "I did. It should be sufficient challenging." He smiled and opened his book to show her.

Cat leaned over to take a look, and nodded.

"I saw that one," she said. "We should get good marks on it, once we get it made."

Remus nodded. "Well then, what needs to get done to start, for yours?"

"Hm..." Cat looked at the list of necessary materials. "I need a copper cauldron and a glass stirring rod, and the base will need to be rainwater. I'm not sure I have enough rainwater, I'll need to set up something to catch the next rainstorm with. Yours?"

"Regular cauldron will do fine, but Im going to need to spend some time boiling down water." He paused for a moment, rereading the potion. "Everything else should be alright. Why it requires water to be boiled down and added to, I don't know, but it should be interesting."

"Plain tap water?" Cat asked, considering it. "I'm not sure, maybe to make a concentrate?" She shrugged. "Should be interesting to see what happens." She glanced at her little written timeline. "Tomorrow night, I'll see about a couple of my ingredients. Lakeweed should be easy enough, and catmint."

Remus nodded. "Indeed," he agreed. "Most of the ingredients in mine should be fairly easily obtainable. There are only a couple things, and those aren't needed until near the end."

Cat nodded and sat back, stretching a bit.

"I'm not super worried about this project," she said. "We both know what we're doing, so it shouldn't be too hard."

"No," Remus agreed. "It should be fairly standard. We just have to actually do it.'

Cat nodded.

"Right," she said. She grinned a bit. "We'll probably get the best marks in the class, short of Severus, probably." She rolled her eyes a bit. "He always gets the best marks in Potions, it's kind of annoying."

Remus snorted quietly. "Severus is unnaturally good," he agreed. "He hardly seems to put any effort in to that class."

"Oh he does," Cat replied as she absently conjured a hair tie. She pulled the pencil out of her hair and tied her hair back into a quick, messy bun. "Severus works hard. He puts in a ton of effort. Potions is his best subject."

"Yes, it is," Remus agreed. "He's rather brilliant at it." Then he shrugged and looked at his books again.

"Now, we should make a list of time-sensitive ingredients that we need and when we need them." Because clearly he liked to be organized. His friends didn't, but he'd gotten stuck with the idiots.

Cat smirked just slightly and turned the sheet of parchment in front of her around so he could see it.

"Already ahead of you," she said. "I think I've got most of mine figured out. Are any of them overlapping with yours?"

Remus scanned the parchment quickly and nodded. "Yes, one or two," he agreed, pulling out his own parchment to take down a couple notes. "None of these should be too difficult to obtain."

"No, not at all," Cat agreed. She was quiet for a moment, just studying him as he wrote things down. He wasn't quite what she expected, even though they'd been having classes together for years. And there was something about him, something she couldn't put her finger on, that made her want to investigate him closer. Call it curiosity.

Remus looked up and caught her gaze for a moment before he looked back down at his list. Nope, nothing to see here, don't get involved. Move along.

"Is there anything we need to start on tonight?"

"Not tonight," Cat replied, shaking her head a little. "But soon. This week, definitely." She watched him still, out of the corner of her eye. He really was rather fascinating. She wondered how he got the scars on his face, even though she knew better than to ask.

Remus nodded. "Same. Well, then, I suppose we'll meet up again in a few nights? To properly get started?"