Chapter 5: Of the different uses of parchment planes and Levitation Spells
The Great Hall was filled with the sound of hundreds of students taking their breakfast before the very first class of the year. James, Sirius and Peter were sitting together at the Gryffindor table; Remus was once more on his own.
“What’s the matter with him?” muttered Sirius for the tenth time, twisting his head to have a better look at Remus. “He became all weird after we got into the boats.”
“Yes, do you think we said something that upset him?” Peter asked anxiously. “He was very friendly in the train, and I can’t think of anything else that could have make him change “ ”
“Can’t you?” said James, cutting across him. He and Sirius exchanged significant glances, but Peter still looked mystified. James leant forward and spoke in a low voice:
“Haven’t you noticed anything? He’s all alone in the last compartment of the train. Dumbledore sends Hagrid just to bring him his letter when everyone else gets theirs by owl post. All the teachers are staring at him at the Sorting. And then he’s taken away by McGonagall instead of coming along with us, and turns up only an hour later.”
“Well, it’s his registration problem, isn’t it?” said Peter.
Sirius rolled his eyes.
“Registration problem! Are you actually satisfied by that dim-witted explanation?”
“Shouldn’t I?” Peter looked truly dumbfounded; when Sirius heaved an exasperated sigh, he reddened and looked down.
“He’s got a secret,” said James darkly. “That’s obvious. And he doesn’t want us to find out. That’s why he’s avoiding us.”
Peter shot an uncertain glance in Sirius’ direction, as if he was afraid of his reaction; then, picking nervously at his sausages with his fork, he mumbled without looking up:
“Why should he? I mean “ in the train, Sirius did tell him we wouldn’t ask him any embarrassing question, didn’t he?”
This time, James and Sirius didn’t know what to answer.
“I don’t know,” said Sirius slowly. “Maybe he’s thinking we would try to discover his secret anyway. That’s really stupid from him, we were really getting along well in the train. And now look at him: he’s all bent and sad and pale… He could do with some company, if you ask “ ”
At this very moment, an owl swooped down and dropped a scarlet letter in front of Sirius.
“Uh-oh,” said James, eyeing the letter warily. “Looks like one of your cousins wrote to your mum last night.”
“Yeah,” said Sirius, holding the letter at arm’s length. “And I’ve got the vague impression that somehow, she wasn’t too pleased with my Sorting.” He got up and cleared his throat.
“Hey, everyone!” he called, waving at the other Gryffindors. They stopped talking and watched him curiously. Some students of other houses turned their heads in Sirius’ direction as well.
“My mother just sent me a Howler “ to protest about my becoming a Gryffindor, I guess “ and knowing how it’s like when she yells in her ordinary voice, I advise you all to put your fingers in your ears if you don’t want to be permanently deaf by the end of the letter.”
Their fellow Gryffindors laughed but didn’t follow the advice: most of them knew by now Sirius’ family were a Slytherin lot, and they were eager to hear what his mother would tell him. James, who vividly remembered Mrs Black’s screams when he and Sirius had gone and played Quidditch during the party, clasped his hands over his ears and waited for the explosion.
Sirius opened the letter and quickly put his own fingers in his ears “ and a deafening roar filled the Hall. The shrieks seemed to bore holes in James’ eardrums, in spite of the protection of his hands. At first no one was able to hear actual words, then they started to distinguish the imprecations Mrs Black’s magically amplified voice was screeching.
“GRYFFINDOR… OUTRAGE TO YOUR NAME AND BLOOD… INCAPABLE OF LIVING UP TO YOUR ANCESTORS’ REPUTATION… SHAME ON THE WHOLE FAMILY… DON’T DESERVE BEING CALLED A BLACK… SCOUNDREL… GOOD FOR NOTHING… YOUR YOUNG BROTHER IS WORTH TEN LIKE YOU… WHEN YOU’LL BE BACK FOR CHRISTMAS WE’LL HAVE A SERIOUS CONVERSATION ABOUT IT, BELIEVE ME!”
The letter fell silent and burst into flames. James slowly removed his hands and shook his head experimentally, as if he had water in his ears. Peter’s head appeared from under the table where he had fallen out of shock, and he shot a terrified look at the letter, which was now no more than a little heap of ashes. Sirius swiftly gathered the reminders of the Howler and dropped them to the stone floor. “Could’ve been worse,” he said lightly in the stunned silence.
***
Life at Hogwarts was nothing short of exciting in James’ opinion: he was always the last to fall asleep and the first to be up, and at every break he was dragging Sirius and Peter along with him to go and explore the castle.
“Settle down, will you?” said Sirius wearily once, as James was practically bouncing up and down with the excitement of discovering a passage hidden behind a tapestry. “You’re making me tired just by looking at you! If you hadn’t dragged me here I would be having a nap “ ”
“How can you think about napping when I just found a secret passage?”
“Easy. I’m currently cold and uncomfortable in your bloody stony passage and my bed is somewhere upstairs, soft and warm and “ ”
At this point Peeves the poltergeist spotted them and started bombarding them with pieces of chalk, and they took it as the signal to retreat.
The classes themselves were fascinating. James found out his best subject was by far Transfiguration, but he was also very good in Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts. The other subjects weren’t nearly as interesting, but he was good at them nevertheless without any hard-working. The only tricky subject was Potions: admittedly he wasn’t bad at it, but he couldn’t see what was so interesting about throwing in a cauldron a handful of ingredients and stirring for hours before achieving any result. He was better with a wand.
As a result, Potions classes were not very enjoyable. Not only was he getting thoroughly bored, but he had also noticed he was completely outclassed in the subject by the small red-haired Gryffindor girl “ Lily Evans, something like that “ and the Slytherin Snape himself. He hated the idea of being beaten by a girl and by a Slytherin “ especially this Slytherin; what’s more Snape had been quick to notice his superiority in Potions and kept shooting James and Sirius contemptuous looks every time they asked Professor Slughorn for an explanation.
Sirius was, just like James, good at anything he tried without working. The teachers had noticed their abilities and often set them as examples for their classmates.
“I hate when he does that,” mumbled James as Professor Ravent described in details James and Sirius’ perfect wand-waving.
“I feel like I’m a respectable top-of-the-class student,” whispered Sirius, in a voice that suggested clearly how shocked he was by this idea. “I will never be able to look at myself in a mirror again…”
“We have to do something,” said James firmly as they were allowed to go back to their seats. “I won’t stand very long being considered as a little perfect know-it-all.” He grimaced, as if those words had a foul taste in his mouth.
“Yes, but we can’t exactly hex Ravent, can we?” said Sirius, in an uncharacteristically wise tone. “It’s not that it wouldn’t be fun, but we would get caught immediately, we’re the only ones who have mastered the spell yet… And he would be able to take our wands away, and that’s definitely not funny.”
They fell silent and gazed into space for a while, thinking hard.
“What on earth is Evans doing?” said James sharply.
Sirius looked round: half a dozen of their classmates had stopped listening to Ravent’s blabbering about the legality of minor jinxes, and were instead watching the redhead Lily Evans with great interest. Lily seemed to be doing something with a large piece of blank parchment. James, who didn’t like being left out, took a piece of parchment and hastily scribbled:
I’d like to know what you are doing with this piece of parchment. Looks fascinating, but I can’t see properly from where I’m sitting. Please write back. J.Potter
Folding the message, he prodded Anthony Bollurish in the back and slipped it to him, muttering: “Give that to Evans.”
Anthony obediently nudged the girl sitting in front of him and gave her the message. “From Potter to Evans,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
James and Sirius watched eagerly as the message passed from student to student, until it reached the girl sitting just behind Lily. They could read the words on the girls’ lips: “From Potter.” Lily took the message, frowning, and sent James an enquiring look. Unfolding the parchment, she read it with her eyebrows raised, then wrote something at the back of it before passing it back to the girl behind her.
The message made its way back to James’ desk. James unfolded it; there were only two words, written in turquoise ink.
Paper plane.
“Paper what?” whispered Sirius, mystified.
“Muggle stuff, I think,” said Peter, who had leant across James to read the message. “She’s Muggle-born, isn’t she?”
James raised his head to look back at Lily, who showed him discreetly the parchment she had folded into a strange object with a sharp point. When the three boys just looked at it blankly, she giggled and threw the paper plane in their direction. It flew straight towards them and landed on Anthony’s desk.
James leapt out of his seat so suddenly Peter gave a little squeak, and even Sirius started in surprise. James grabbed the plane before Anthony could even move and sneaked back to his seat, excitement etched all over his face.
“This is it! What we were looking for!” He waved the plane in front of Sirius’ bemused face.
“We can make as much of those as we want! We just have to aim them at quills and ink bottles, and we could create a nice mess without getting caught!”
“There’s still a risk of getting caught,” Peter pointed out, looking a bit frightened. “What if a teacher sees you throwing that thing?”
“Yeah, well, where’s the fun without a bit of risk?” said James happily, looking fondly at the plane.
“Calm down,” muttered Sirius, “and put that away. Evans is laughing at you.”
James looked round, and sure enough Lily was sniggering at his excitement. He felt his face grow hot and hastily stuffed the plane in his bag.
They examined the plane inch by inch, and soon they had learnt how to make them.
“We must be careful with them,” said James authoritatively. “Not use them too often, especially not in McGonagall’s classroom. She’s too clever to be fooled and we would end up with half-a-dozen detentions each. I suggest we should first try in Ravent’s class. Should be fun.”
“Oh, and in Slughorn’s,” added Sirius, his eyes alight with mischief. “Make them fly into Snivellus’ cauldron… Should wipe that smug grin of his off his greasy face…”
And so they did. From that day, parchment planes of all shapes and all colours flew everywhere during Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts. Snape received in his cauldron a plane which happened to be full of fish eyes. To his defence, Sirius said he had absolutely no idea fish eyes would make a Swelling Potion turn red and explode.
Lily Evans herself had her potion totally spoiled by an acid-green plane; James swore (between two fits of laughter) he didn’t know acid-green parchment, when put in contact with a Swelling Potion, would emit an ear-splitting screech before melting into a disgusting, foul-smelling green paste. Which happened to splatter Evans’ hands and face, as she hastily tried to repair the damage without Slughorn noticing.
When she got rid of the green substance that covered her face and stuck to her hair, she stormed into the Common Room and found James, Sirius and Peter dutifully doing their homework. That is to say, preparing planes for the coming day.
“Uh-oh,” muttered Sirius, as the small redhead came closer, her face red with anger and her mouth set in a thin line. “Storm ahead, James.”
James didn’t even have the time to look round: a small hand firmly grasped the plane he was carefully folding and pulled it out of his hand. He raised his head, bewildered, and found Evans’ face inches from his own. He blinked and hastily leaned back in his chair.
“Something I can do for you, Evans?”
“Yes,” she said in a determined voice. “I have a question.”
She crossed her arms across her chest and glared down at him.
“What have I ever done to you?”
James shot an uncertain look in his friends’ direction. Peter looked extremely interested in the nails of his right hand, and Sirius just looked blankly back at him.
“Come on, Evans, t’was just a joke, you don’t need to “ ”
“It was very mean,” she said in a trembling voice, “to throw that in my potion. I’m new here, I’m not coming from an all-wizard family, I don’t know anything about the wizarding world… You’ve done that on purpose.”
“Course not. Besides, you’re not the only one we “ ”
“You spoiled my potion, and I had actually made it perfect, and now “ ”
“Is it just me,” Sirius interrupted loudly, “or does someone here have a serious problem with her sense of humour? Close your mouth and open your ears, Evans. It. Was. A. Joke! What are you afraid of, anyway? You’re already Slughorn’s favourite student!”
Evans started at Sirius’ outburst and turned even redder than she already was. For a few seconds they thought she was going to start yelling “ or crying, it was hard to tell; all James knew was he really didn’t want her to do either of those things. The situation was awkward enough. Yet she merely bit her lower lip before running up the stairs to the girls’ dormitory. Peter heaved a relieved sigh.
“This girl’s going to cause a lot of trouble,” he said.
“What makes you say that?” said James distractedly, picking up his plane and smoothing the wings.
“Nothing, he’s just afraid of girls,” said Sirius idly.
“It’s not that,” mumbled Peter, mortified. “It’s just “ you know, she looks very shy and everything, and suddenly she shows up and starts telling us off. And she’s good in class, too. Once she’s got used to magic, she could become “”
“A red-haired nuisance,” completed Sirius, nodding. “I see your point.”
James lifted his plane at eye-level, watching it with a slight frown.
“Where d’you think we could find enough spiders to fill this one?”
***
After a few days they grew tired of throwing paper planes, mainly because now most of their classmates had taken to making planes as well; Professor McGonagall, who had received many complaints, put the entire class in detention and threatened to take every single point left from Gryffindor. The Gryffindor first-years regretfully gave up on the planes, but James, Sirius and Peter decided they couldn’t decently leave their classmates, in danger of sinking once more into the dreadful boredom they had suffered from before the Plane Era.
So they started looking for other ideas. Sirius discovered in their Charms book the Levitation spell, and though they were not supposed to learn it before long he and James practised it anyway: Levitate objects in class was a very tempting idea. Poor Peter had trouble with the simplest spells and all he could do was watching his friends’ feats.
As soon as they had mastered the spell, no teacher had a moment of peace: pieces of chalk, books, rolls of parchment, quills and ink bottles rose unexpectedly in the air to fall abruptly on their heads. Sirius and James (who had been both bored to death during their detention and weren’t looking forward to another one) were very careful, whispering very quietly the incantation and waving their wands under their desks, and they never got caught. The teachers were at a complete loss of explanation for this strange phenomenon; after all first-years weren’t supposed to know about the spell yet…
***
As for Remus, he was working hard and doing well. He tried very hard not to think about what would have been his life if he hadn’t refused to have Sirius, James and Peter as friends. Several times, they had called after him in the corridors or at lunch, but he had pretended he couldn’t hear them. Now they seemed to have given up… He tried to tell himself this was for the best, yet he often caught himself watching the three of them longingly, as they whispered like conspirators in classes.
It was the end of their third week at Hogwarts, and Remus looked paler and thinner than ever. He felt constantly feverish now, and he knew what that meant. And he was terrified by it.
“He looks sick, don’t you think?”
Sirius yawned, and tiredly leant forward to have a better view at Remus. He looked at him for a few seconds, then straightened up and stretched, yawning again. Next second he had collapsed on the table, his head in his arms. James impatiently elbowed him in the ribs. “Well?” he urged him.
Sirius groaned. “You’re really a pain in the neck, did you know that? Maybe you need only three hours’ sleep, but the rest of us are quite happy with our ten hours a night, thank you very much.”
“You would spend most of your time sleeping if I let you,” retorted James. “And that was not what I was talking about. What d’you think of Remus?”
“You bloody well know what I think of him, we’ve already talked about him before. He looks ill, and so what? He has the right to be ill, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but… Oh, never mind, forget it.” James knew by now there was no way Sirius’ (otherwise considerable) curiosity could be aroused before he was fully awake, which took an extraordinary amount of time in his opinion.
“Thank you.” Sirius buried his face in his arms again and started to snore a bit too loudly. James rolled his eyes and looked back at Remus. It wasn’t only that he looked ill, he also looked scared “ though James couldn’t possibly think of a reason for it.
“He’s not paying as much attention as usual in class,” said Peter tentatively. He was watching James with a slight frown. “But the teachers don’t mind. Even McGonagall doesn’t seem to be angry at him… Weird, isn’t it?”
James nodded, without taking his eyes off Remus. The latter looked up and met James’ eye; at once he started and turned horribly livid. James tried to smile encouragingly at him but Remus was now getting up and hurrying along the Gryffindor table. He practically ran to the doors and into the Entrance Hall, as if James’ gaze was burning him.
James stared after him, his mouth stupidly hanging open, utterly flabbergasted. Sirius had lifted his head and was also staring at the door, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Peter’s eyes were as round as galleons.
“There is definitely a spider on the ceiling,” said Peter slowly, in a hushed voice.
James and Sirius blinked and looked up. Of course they couldn’t see any spider on the magical ceiling, which was cloudy that morning. They looked back at Peter.
““A spider on the ceiling”?” said Sirius. “What in the name of Merlin are you talking about?”
“Oh!” Peter reddened. “Sorry, it’s “ it’s the translation of a French expression. When the French say someone has a spider on the ceiling, it means they are a bit “ a bit of a weirdo, you know… Like Remus…”
“How come you’re using French expressions?” Sirius looked distinctly confused; he hadn’t even noticed he was vigorously digging his knife in the wooden table, a good two inches from his plate. Peter started twisting the hem of his shirt in his fingers.
“Well, it’s “ it’s the woman who’s been taking care of me for five years… She’s French, and when she tries to speak English she merely translates French word for word. So I came to use French expressions, without meaning it…” he had a sort a frightened laugh. “Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Why do you need someone to take care of you?” asked Sirius curiously. “Why can’t your mum do that?”
Peter hung his head.
“My mum has turned a bit “ a bit weird since my dad died, you know. She thinks he’s still alive and “ well “ she can’t really live alone. So Marina takes care of both of us. She accompanied me to Diagon Alley, and to Platform 9 ¾ and everything…”
James and Sirius exchanged uncomfortable looks. James was starting to wonder if he was the only one who had had a normal childhood.
“I wrote to her about you,” Peter went on, his whole face suddenly lighting up with a smile. “I said I had two friends who helped me in class, I told her we were always together. She wrote back “ her letter’s hard to understand because she’s even worse at writing English than at speaking it. But from what I could understand, she read my letter to mum and they were both very happy about it, and my mum was more normal than she had ever seen her…” He beamed at them. “Mum even wrote me a few lines at the end of the letter!”
Sirius smiled warmly at Peter.
“Well, I’m sure that letter was more enjoyable than any of those I ever received from my dear family,” he said cheerfully. “But we should really go now, or we’re going to be late in Transfiguration.”
The three of them got up. James was still unsure about what to say; Peter’s story had made him deeply uncomfortable. As Peter came closer to him, he made up his mind:
“Erm “ Peter?” Peter looked at him enquiringly. “We’re glad you’re our friend as well, you know.”
Peter beamed again.
***
“Sirius?”
“Mm?”
“A bit dull, don’t you think “ Levitate books and chalk?”
“Well, I do have a thing for ink bottles, you know, when you let them down and they splatter “ ”
“Yeah, but we already did it. Twice.”
“And so? Don’t you like covering Snivellus in red ink?”
“Actually I liked better the turquoise one. But that’s not the point: we should vary our targets a bit.”
“I guess you’re right, people have started hiding their ink bottles in their bags. Shocking lack of trust from our own classmates. But what d’you suggest? To lift McGonagall up?”
“Not exactly “ what about her favourite student?”
“What are you talking about? You are her favourite student!”
“Potter! Black! Will you be kind enough to pay attention?” barked Professor McGonagall.
They started and looked up innocently. She walked to James’ desk and peered through her square glasses at the perfect buttons he had made.
“That’s quite good, Potter. If you were as quiet as most of your classmates, I would have nothing to say. Same goes for you, Black. And I think this button still has antlers “ ” Sirius hastily picked up his wand and murmured an incantation; his button lost its antlers and stopped vibrating at once. “Now that’s better,” said Professor McGonagall appreciatively. “Pettigrew, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such buttons. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a way of buttoning a shirt if the buttons keep running in every direction…”
It took a while before Professor McGonagall grew tired of Peter’s fruitless attempts to turn his beetle into a button. Finally she gave him extra homework and walked away. At this very moment, they heard a shriek in the corridor, followed by a loud crash and a cackle of laughter.
“PEEVES!” shouted Professor McGonagall furiously, opening the door of her classroom. There was another crash and another cackle of laughter, and she turned on the doorstep to face her silent students.
“I’m going to sort that out. Go on with your attempts, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She walked out, closing the door behind her. James resumed their conversation as if nothing had happened.
“Obviously when I said “her favourite student”, I was talking about somebody else… Who had never been told off in her entire life? Who is always top of the class “ well, equal with us, obviously “ in Charms? Whose brilliance is Slughorn always raving about in Potions?”
Sirius slowly turned his head to look at somebody on his right. Then he looked back at James, a dark expression on his face.
“No way, James. I won’t let you do that. Blacks are gentlemen. We don’t curse women.”
James looked at him incredulously, and Peter’s face fell with disappointment.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course I’m kidding, you idiot. When do we start?”
“Excuse me,” said another voice from behind them.
They looked round. It was Remus.
“You’re going to levitate a girl?” he said doubtfully. “When you never levitated anything heavier than a Charms book?”
“Yep,” answered Sirius proudly.
Remus shook his head.
“It’s not going to work. You’re not even supposed to know about the spell. If you do that, you’re geniuses.”
“Well, watch,” said Sirius. He picked his wand on his desk and pointed it discreetly on his right.
“Wingardium Leviosa!” he whispered.
At once, a red-haired girl rose in the air. She let out a shriek and the other students looked round.
“Lily!” squealed a few girls. “What are you doing up there?”
“I don’t know!” wailed Lily Evans, whose head was now close to the ceiling. “I “ someone must have cast the Levitation spell on me “ can you let me down, whoever it is? This is not funny at all!” her voice rose to a scream as Sirius gave little flicks of his wand, causing her head to bump softly into the ceiling several times. Some students looked scared and clutched their desk as if they were afraid of being levitated unexpectedly, others laughed as Lily started a strange dance, following every move of Sirius’ wand.
“Brilliant!” whispered James, almost choking from repressing his laughter. “Now it’s my turn! I’ve got an idea.”
Sirius lowered his wand and Lily fell abruptly with a scream. James muttered the incantation just before she crashed on her desk and she shot upward once more, her face livid with fright, her eyes tightly shut. James moved her wand slowly to the left and Lily moved in the same way across the ceiling; students were looking up at her, some of them open-mouthed, completely transfixed, others howling with laughter. Lily didn’t have many friends; she was too brusque “ if not scathing “ for that.
“Just a bit more to the left…”
Lily reached the chandelier hanging in the middle of the ceiling and James abruptly lifted the spell. She let out a high-pitched scream when she felt herself falling again, but she didn’t go very far: the collar of her robes was entangled in the chandelier, and she was left hanging helplessly from the ceiling. The students burst out laughing as she ridiculously swung back and forth. Sirius, James and Peter were laughing so hard they were about to fall off their seats, and Remus himself couldn’t help grinning.
“Wingardium Leviosa! ”
James gasped in shock as he was abruptly lifted in the air. His head hit the ceiling painfully and his glasses slipped down his nose; he only had the time to catch them before they fell.
“Ow! Sirius, that hurt!”
“Erm… As a matter of fact, I didn’t do it, James…” Sirius had stopped laughing and he sounded slightly nervous.
James put his glasses back on and found himself facing a furious-looking Lily Evans, still hanging from the chandelier, her wand in her hand and pointed at his chest.
Oh. She was tougher than he had thought.
“All right, Evans?” he said gaily, crossing his legs in mid-air and waving at her. “Know about the spell? I should’ve guessed. Did you learn your whole Charms book by heart before even coming here?”
Somewhere below him, his classmates were laughing again.
Lily reddened with anger.
“You’re the one to talk! You’ve been levitating everything you’ve met for the past week,” she snarled. “Is that your idea of fun, Potter?”
“Well, if you had seen yourself swinging at the ceiling, you would have laughed as well. No one can keep a straight face in front of that,” answered James, incapable of hiding his broad grin at the recollection.
“Really?” she hissed, raising her wand threateningly, “Well I “ didn’t “ think “ it “ was “ so “ funny…” And with every word she made James’ head bang against the ceiling again.
“Ouch! Cut it out, Evans, it was just a joke…”
“How very amusing,” she said icily. “I can hardly breathe for laughing so hard…”
But James had had enough. He whipped the air with his own wand and the chandelier began to rotate; Lily screamed again, trying desperately to stop the chandelier with which she was spinning faster and faster. She involuntarily waved her wand and James, with a thrill of horror, felt himself falling. He slammed painfully into one of the desks, knocking it over, and lay on the floor for a whole minute, fighting to catch his breath.
Before he could get to his feet, Lily finally fell from the still-spinning chandelier, and landed in the middle of a group of girls who had been too slow to get out of the way. The two girls on which Lily had collapsed shrieked and clutched their friends to prevent themselves from falling “ and of course they all fell over in a heap.
James got up at last, rubbing his bruised knee, and considered the mess: desks overturned, girls struggling to get up, people laughing and swearing as they tried to find all their things. Sirius, Peter and Remus joined him, almost choking with laughter.
“You were right “ that was so fun!”
Sirius’ words rang in the classroom, which had abruptly gone silent. James and Sirius wheeled around and found themselves face-to-face with a livid Professor McGonagall.
“I had the privilege to watch the last part of your amusing little party,” she said, literally shaking with anger. “And I saw and heard enough to conclude the pair of you are responsible for it “ and for the unexplained chalk-flying my colleagues had to endure this past week. But I would never have thought you, Miss Evans, would use a spell on another student. ”
James and Sirius exchanged a bewildered look and started speaking at the same time.
“It wasn’t her, Professor “ ”
“ “ we started it “ ”
“ “ it was just a stupid joke “ ”
“Whoever started it, Miss Evans did use the Levitation Spell on you, Potter, which she wasn’t allowed to do whatsoever. I’m afraid I know the school rules much better than you do.”
James opened his mouth, realised he had nothing to say and closed it again. Behind him someone was sniffing, and he was pretty sure it was Lily Evans.
Professor McGonagall dismissed all the students except Sirius, James and Lily, all three of which were given a dreadful, ten-minutes-long telling-off and detentions. When they got at last out of the classroom, Sirius and James ran into Peter and Remus who had been waiting for them.
“So?” said Peter apprehensively. “Detention?”
“Yeah,” said Sirius, sounding unconcerned. “One for Evans and two for James and I because we started it. And we must have lost Gryffindor ‘bout sixty points.”
Peter looked impressed.
So did Remus. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said to Sirius and James. “You’re really, really good, you know. I’ve been trying to practice the Levitation spell ever since I saw you use it, but I still can’t do it.”
“We can help you, if you like,” said Sirius. “It’s quite fun. How about tonight in the common room?”
Remus hesitated for a while.
“Sounds good,” he said at last.
James and Sirius exchanged a grin.
The four of them sat together at the Gryffindor table for lunch that day. Lily Evans shot them a filthy look before taking a seat as far from them as possible.
“And by the way, James” said Remus, glancing furtively at the carrot-haired girl, “you and Lily Evans arguing in the air was the funniest thing I had ever seen.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
*********
A/N: I had some trouble writing that chapter, so any criticism or remark is welcome. Bonne lecture!