James woke up in the hospital wing with a splitting headache.

"You moron!" came a ridiculously shrill, high pitched voice.

James winced and flinched away from the voice, grabbing the covers of the bed he was lying in and pulling them over his head. They were quickly wrenched away from him and he whimpered, blinking against the harsh light.

"You completely daft, moronic ponce!" It didn't take James long to realize it was Molly standing over him, her hands on her hips. Her sleek red hair was tied in a bun at the top of her head, making her look more like an angry librarian than a student in healing. "What is the matter with you?"

James groaned.

"What'd I do?" he asked pathetically, pulling himself into a sitting position. He touched his head and immediately regretted it. Such a sharp pain ran through his skull that he wanted to throw himself into the pillows and take a vast amount of pain killers.

"What did you do? What did you do?" Molly shrieked. Her voice kept raising every time she spoke and James idly wondered when she would begin to sound like she'd sucked an entire balloon of helium. It was bad enough she had a nasally high pitched voice that grated on his nerves when she spoke normally. When she was angry it was as though someone had plugged an amplifier into her vocal chords and turned it up to an eleven. "I can't even begin to list the things that you've done this time!"

James counted down the seconds until she actually did begin to list the things he had done. Ten, nine, eight -

"You dumped mugwart into a volatile love potion, for one," Molly began, pacing back and forth. James tucked her three seconds into his own personal Molly-Scolding log. This was not the first time James had been ripped a new one by Molly. He just wished he could ignore her voice like he could with everyone else. "Which exploded all over the classroom. You humiliated poor Albus."

"Really wasn't that humiliating, Molly," James heard Albus voice from where the visitors chairs were lined along the wall. He hadn't even noticed Albus until then. "The look on Malfoy's face was priceless, James, you should have seen it."

"Albus!" Molly yelled, turning her snake-like gaze on the youngest Potter boy. With her back turned, James grinned at Al and winked before returning to his stoic composure as Molly faced him again. "Well, if you didn't humiliate your brother, you humiliated Rose! She's horrified by this whole thing! You've really done it this time!"

"Ah, Molly, it's not that bad," James laughed at his cousin's exaggeration. He quickly regretted it as that sharp pain ran through his skull again. "You have to admit, the incident with the owl dung and the toast last holiday was much worse."

"You really don't get it, do you, James?" Molly cried. "You could have hurt someone! This isn't some silly little prank, you moron! You knocked yourself out, hit your head against a desk. You have a concussion. You're lucky Scorpius wasn't hurt in all of this."

"Who?" James asked, raising an eyebrow. He was more concerned about who this Scorpius fellow was than the fact he had a concussion. He'd done worse playing Quidditch, anyway. The name Scorpius, though, sounded very familiar...

"Malfoy," Albus offered helpfully.

Molly gave an exasperated cry of indignation. James smiled cheerfully.

"Molly, it's okay. I'm fine, everyone's fine. I'm flattered that you're worried about me, love, but you can toddle along now," he said, waving his hand as though to shoo her away.

"James, you little... Ugh!" Molly could no longer speak due to her overwhelming frustration, which James was quite proud to have cause. Seeing Molly so frazzled amused him to no end. He watched as she stormed out of the hospital wing grumbling about idiot cousins and 'Stupid Potter genes'. He didn't care to mention that Fred was practically his twin in personality.

Albus stood up, pushing his chair back.

"I should get back to class," he said, glancing at the clock that hung on the wall.

"Ah, you're such a goody goody, Al," James joked. "Your brother is in the infirmary. I'm sure you could get out of classes for the rest of the day."

Albus gave him a pathetic smile and shook his head.

"Stick to practical jokes that don't hurt people, James," Al said, and James was a little taken aback by this. "I don't want to be the one to owl Mum saying you've lost a limb."

And with that, Al left the infirmary, being sure to grab his books from the bed table. James wasn't sure whether to be genuinely impressed with his brother or annoyed that Albus had just scolded him. Besides, what didn't kill him made him stronger. Limbs were easily replaced.

- - -

James had snuck out of the infirmary and was now heading to the Great Hall for dinner. The nurse had forbidden him from leaving because of his concussion, but he was feeling much better after sneaking a few pain-killing potions. Besides, he was starving and there was no chance he was going to eat hospital wing meals.

Catching sight of Fred walking down the hall chatting animatedly with Louis, another one of their many cousins. Louis had the benefit of not looking like a single one of them, though, with his blond hair and - well, feminine good-looks. He didn't even have a single blemish despite being seventeen. It would have been annoying if Louis hadn't been flamboyantly gay.

James wasn't sure whether to blame the french or the Veela part of him.

"Oi, Fred! Louis!" James called, jogging down the hall, earning glares from those he brushed passed. He slowed as he passed Gina, grabbing her shoulder and giving her a kiss on the cheek before running off to join his friends before she could lay her hands on him. He and Gina had been an on again, off again item. They would date until she caught James flirting with another girl and then he would spend the time apart from her begging her to come back to him, he had changed.

"James? Aren't you supposed to be in the hospital wing?" Louis asked, stepping back a bit and judging James' disheveled appearance. "Have you even looked in a mirror? Your head is swollen."

"Swollen with knowledge of many things, Louis," James laughed, throwing his arm around his cousin's shoulders. "Like what Gina looks without her clothes on - she has these perfect round -"

"Ew, James, please," Louis moaned, covering his ears.

"I was going to say birth marks! I was going to say birth marks."

"Yeah?" Fred asked, raising an eyebrow and looking only half interested. He had a lopsided grin on his face.

"I mean, they're on her -"

"Enough!" Louis cried, shoving James away from him. Fred laughed.

"C'mon, James. You know Louis is easily squicked by what's underneath a girl's skirt," the red-headed boy laughed, and Louis rolled his eyes. They had reached the Great Hall and it was plain to see that Louis was glad to get rid of them as he made his way to the Hufflepuff table.

James and Fred made their way to the Gryffindor table. It was delayed by James, who twice plopped himself down in the middle of a group of girls that weren't sitting at the Gryffindor table and twice Fred had to drag the womanizer away from his adorable fans. It seemed the concussion James had suffered was making him a little more woman crazy than normal.

Eventually they made it to their respective table and sat down near the edge, with Albus and Rose across the table from them.

"Aren't you supposed to be in the hospital wing?" Rose asked, giving him a look that was frighteningly close to the one Molly had given him in the infirmary. "Molly said you have a concussion. You are so lucky that explosion didn't kill somebody."

"Yes, yes, my darling," James said, smiling and looking at her as though she were a five year old. "But a concussion isn't going to keep me away from a decent meal."

"Or a girl's skirt it seems like," Fred added.

"Yes, or that," said James with a jovial laugh. Rose made a disgusted noise and stared down at her plate. "Besides, everyone's making such a big deal of it all and I was the only one who got hurt wasn't I? I bet I'd get a lot of praise and hoopla if the cauldron had exploded in that little Slytherin's face, eh?"

"No, you certainly would not," came that all-too-familiar nasally voice. James groaned and hung his head. Could he not get rid of the she-demon? "Gryffindor lost fifty points, thanks to you."

"Fifty? That's nothing, we'll make it up in a day or so with you being such a brown-noser," James remarked, looking up at Molly and smiling pleasantly.

"You have detention," Molly answered, ignoring James' shrewd remark. Her voice had become monotonous and her glare was beginning to become a permanent resident on her face. "Cleaning the potions lab, tomorrow at six."

"During dinner?" James moaned. "How cruel."

"Cruel would be eviscerating you, James Potter," Molly growled, leaning towards him. "But they wouldn't let me do that."

James inched away from the angered Weasley, all but crawling into Fred's lap.

"Save me, Fred. I think she's finally snapped."

And with that, Molly stomped off and Fred chuckled and shook his head.

"One of these days, she really is going to eviscerate you," he commented, shoving James off of him so that he could eat his meal. James flopped back into his seat and began to pile copious amounts of food onto his golden plate. It was lucky the dishes were magically refilled when they became empty, because James nearly had an entire bowl of mashed potatoes on his plate.

"I know," James said as he shoveled cream corn onto his potatoes and mashing them in together. "I just pray that when that day comes, I'm still a faster runner than she is."

The conversation slowed to a lull as they began to eat, James polishing off one plate before the others even had a chance to finish their first. Since Potions had been one of the earlier classes of the day, James had missed lunch and he felt as though his hunger was eating a hole in his stomach. Again he piled his plate heaping when the Great Hall door creaked open.

Usually James wasn't one to notice such things, especially when in an animated conversation about Quidditch, but it was like he had a metal plate in his head and there was a magnet attracting his gaze to it. When his eyes hit the boy who was pushing closing the door behind him, James felt like the chair had fallen out from beneath him.

In fact, he gave a little jump that nearly upset his goblet of juice.

"What's the matter?" Al asked, looking up from his own healthy helping of food - though not quite as large in proportion to James'.

"N-nothing," James said, grimacing as that dull throbbing pain came back to his head. As his stomach tightened into knots and his heart pitter-pattered in his chest, James felt like he was going to vomit. "Uh, you were working on, um, love potions in class today?"

Albus nodded and James swallowed thickly, pulling his hands beneath the table and clenching them into hard fists. So tight, in fact, that his own nails were beginning to dig into the palm of his hand, cutting the skin. He couldn't tear his eyes away, no matter how badly he wanted to.

"Do you find it incredibly hot in here?" James asked, pulling at his tie.

"Not really, no," Fred answered, never looking up from his plate. Albus didn't seem too concerned either, but Rose was giving him that stare. That stare that said, 'You have a problem and I'm figuring it out in my ridiculously large brain.'

"I think... I think I don't feel so well," James said abruptly, pushing his plate away from him. In fact, he didn't feel well. His hands were becoming clammy and he felt very flu-ish. It wasn't the love potion! He was just sick, that was all. He'd go back to the infirmary and take a health potion and he would be fine. That was all it was.

And then he turned around and threw up everything he'd eaten.

"James!" Rose cried, darting out of her seat and to his side. She quickly scourgified the filthy spot where James had been forced to relieve his stomach contents (ah, what a waste of food!). "C'mon, you have to go to the infirmary."

Glancing at the looks he was getting, James quickly choked out, "The concussion. Just the concussion."