Taking Chances
Chapter 1 – A Painful Beginning
James stretched his neck and looked over his shoulder. Divination had to be the most boring subject ever! He ached for a moment of action or fight against evil. When was the torture going to end?!
Sirius Black, James Potter's best friend, was leaning on the hind legs of his wooden chair, gazing at his pretty tea leaves partner, Arabella Frell. Sirius was so lucky to have a partner like her! James himself was teamed up with Edna the Eerie, a.k.a. a major nerd.
Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, James glanced at his tea leaf and pretended to look up the object in his text book, while actually sneaking peeks at Lily Evans.
Lily Evans was the smartest, the prettiest, most-outstanding, good-looking girl in all Hogwarts. She had long, shiny, red hair, and great emerald eyes. She was tall and thin, always perfect, and amazing. The one problem was: she loathed James Potter.
Oh how cute she was! How cute she looked. If only he could ever persuade her to go on a date.........
"Mr. Potter!"
He quickly looked up. "Yes, Professor Trewlaney?"
Professor Trewlaney whipped back her abnormally long, tangled hair, rattling her beads in the process and swishing her many scarves and shawls. "Could you please explain your tea leaf to the class?"
James started to flip through his book, but realized it was no use. He hadn't been paying to the lesson at all, so he might as well just wing it.
"Well, Ma'am, the glow-in-the-dark stars made me tired, and I kinda fell asleep!" he said, yawning and grinning a triumphant smile, and pointing to the glittering stars decoratively hanging above the classroom.
The class giggled and squealed.
Sirius, wanting to be with his best friend in detention, and also wanting the attention, bravely stood and produced a loud and obviously fake snore.
The class giggled and squealed more than ever.
Professor Trewlaney did not want to take this nonsense any longer, so she yelled, "SILENCE!!"
The class grew quiet.
"You, and you," she pointed to Sirius and James, "Detention....NOW!"
The two teenage boys smirked at each other and walked slowly and proudly to the back of the classroom, while the students cheered and clapped their hands enthusiastically. Sirius flicked his long, black, hair to the girls on the left, and James winked to the girls on the right. The girls laughed and whispered excitedly to each other, but Lily just rolled her eyes.
***
After lunch, Remus, Sirius, and James walked rested under a pear tree next to the lake. Remus had short, dirty blonde hair and light brown eyes. His grades were almost always the same as Lily's, and he tried to keep Sirius and James from starting pranks…too much. Sirius and James had always been the best of friends. Sirius had long black hair, James had short black hair. Sirius had bright blue eyes; James had dark chocolate brown eyes. They were both strong, and so incredibly handsome that practically every girl would die to date one of the two, and had proclaimed their role as "The Hogwarts Heart Throbs" long ago. In their first year, James, Sirius, and Remus had formed a group called the Marauders. This group was a secret society of the biggest pranksters in Hogwarts History. To keep this club the most private, Sirius and James became unregistered animagus. Sirius became a scruffy and playful dog, and James became a headstrong and leadership stag.
One day, they found out that Remus was actually a werewolf. Because he was definitely not a bad person, James and Sirius arranged that they would meet with Remus when he transformed into a werewolf in animagus form. Henceforth, they would not get hurt and would be able to communicate and stop him from doing anything crazy to himself. To communicate about these meetings in private, they gave each other code names. James was Prongs, Sirius was Padfoot, and Remus was Moony.
James and Sirius watched the regular girls dip their toes into the water, but instead, Remus read a book, that he was thoroughly in.
"Ah, C'mon, Moony!" said Sirius. "Don't you want to rest your eyes on the prize?"
Remus, confused, looked around for a moment for the "prize". Then he saw what Sirius meant.
"Whoa, okay, that's definitely not my prize. Reading for a good reason of education is a better one." Remus held up the book he was reading, Greek Myths and Roman Astronomy.
James snorted. "Well, that's not my kind of prize. Too me, that's more of an investment."
Moony just shook his head and smiled.
A few minutes passed, and James went back to momentarily glimpsing crossways over the lake at Lily.
Padfoot saw Prongs and chuckled. "Why don't you ask her, Prongs?"
"Because she'll just say no again! Like every other time!"
"Well now's your chance to prove you're worthy." Sirius nodded towards two boys to the side of them.
Avery and Mulciber were lounging slowly towards the girls. Slytherins. Slytherins and Gryffindor's were mortal despised enemies. Each hated each other and would not help to express how much.
Now, with that Avery, you needed at least one person to stop him. With Mulciber, you needed two.
"C'mon, Moony." James sighed as he tugged Remus along by the arm.
The three teenagers stalked Avery and Mulciber, being cautious with every step, and not being afraid to hide behind a tree or bush if had to.
Then they reached the girls.
"Hey, hot stuff." Avery smirked at Arabella, receiving a scrunched up nose and a flick of her hair.
Sirius snarled.
"Oh, hi," Mulciber sneered at Lily. "Maybe sometime we can get together. Oh, wait. You're a MUDBLOOD." Mulciber and Avery snickered; James turned mad to furious.
Lily bravely acted like no one was talking to her, and ignored the two with great courage.
"Hey, I'm talking to you MUDBLOOD."
"Leave her alone!" James exclaimed coldly.
It took a moment for everyone to realize that the boys were there, defending the girls.
"Hey, Potter. Hope you're doing worse than usual today."
"I'm actually doing very well, Av."
"So what do you want?!" asked Mulciber menacingly.
"Ha!" mocked Sirius. "What do you think?!" he shot out.
Suddenly, all three boys cast spells on Avery and Mulciber. Being so unexpected, the enemies had no time to react. Luckily, the Marauders had a secret word: crack. "Crack" meant "go" or "do" or "quickly – run!" or any kind of main action word. In the very beginning of the secret word, Sirius had suggested "bellybutton". But Remus reasoned that "crack" would be better. For example: when another heard one of the three say "crack" they would have thought they heard him say "crap". So, being the wise fellow he is, Sirius had muttered "crack" just loud enough for the Marauders to hear.
A few minutes later, Mulciber was frozen solid, and Avery was stuffed inside a 10 feet tall teddy bear. (Sirius' choice, of course)
"Aww, thanks, guys!" giggled Arabella and smiling at Sirius. The rest of the girls grinned and said their thanks, but Lily just quickly nodded her head in the direction of Remus and Sirius and then turned away to say something to Arabella.
"See what I mean?" James said to Sirius.
Unfortunately, Sirius was not listening, and was instead sneaking short looks at Arabella and flicking his hair and smirking, trying to look his absolute best, when he got her attention.
"Sirius! See what I mean?!" he tried again, a little louder.
"Oh, uh, yeah, sure." Sirius said, not concentratingon on James at all.
James rolled his eyes.
Suddenly, there was a startling fast sound of footsteps hitting the grass, running up to them all. James saw the girls faces turn frightened and looking at him in warning. James casually turned around, only to see Severus Snape flick out his wand and yell, "Sectumsempra!"
James, taken on sure surprise, felt a razor sharp pain in his side. Feeling dizzy, painful, and light-headed, he fell to his knees, clutching his stomach and falling onto the grass. Sirius jumped on Snape and was strangling him, while Remus had backed away to get help. Lily ran over to James and knelt beside him.
"James Potter." She said, pulling on the bottom of his shirt. "You are so lucky I'm the only one of three at Hogwarts who decided to take Wizard Medical Care class who is here right now."
James would have actually enjoyed this comment, but at the moment he was experiencing terrible pain.
Pulling off his shirt, she bent down low to his side to examine his injury. "Oh, my heavens!" she muttered. "This is bad, Potter. You have to get to the Hospital Wing right away. As much as I hate/despise you, you need serious help. Maybe even Saint Mungo's." Lily rolled her eyes as she saw a girl walking by, her eyebrows raised as she saw James' surely toned chest. Lily, of course, would never even think to go into that nonsence. Right?
"No!" James managed to cringe out. "The quidittich game's on Friday!"
"Well, we'll have to see what we can do about that, won't we?"
"What if-"
James suddenly passed out. The last thing he saw was Lily's beautiful green eyes staring down at him.