Ch 3 The Saviour November
I awoke to the sound of shrieking. Sitting up, hair dishevelled, eyes still stuck together with sleep, I pulled apart the curtains around my bed.
"What is it?" Mary mumbled groggily. I rubbed my eyes and looked over towards Lily's bed where an enormous tawny owl was pecking at her hair. We had now been here for three months, and I was settling in quite well. Remus and I were inseparable and I was firm friends with Mary too. Defence Against the Dark arts was my absolute favourite subject. I soon learned I was far ahead of the rest of the class in defensive spells and learning new ones took a try or two, unlike most who took sometimes five of six times to get it right. Professor Elmwood was surprised by how quickly I was picked up spells, but had given me some extension 2nd and 3rd year work. Transfiguration, too, was relatively simple and once I had grasped the basic fundamentals it came with ease. I didn't know how I was doing so well. I put it down to a lot of background reading.
"GET IT OFF ME!" She screamed, whacking out violently at the owl.
"HEY!" I jumped out of bed. "That's MY owl! Leave him alone! He's just never seen red hair before, that's all." I went to rescue Lily from my owl, Mouse. I had bought him for Emily for her birthday so she could send me letters during school. There was a letter attached to his leg. I smiled and Lily scowled and stalked to the bathroom to fix her hair. Mouse was a bit... impaired, let's just say. A backwards owl, hence the name 'Mouse.' Even in three months, he still hadn't been able to pick up the fact that letters were delivered at breakfast.
"You should keep that thing locked up." She called. Not a bad idea, but like I was going to tell her that.
"Mouse isn't a thing." I said icily. "And if you're so pathetic maybe you should be locked up." Mouse ruffled his feathers to dislodge the light dusting of snow on his wings and nibbled on my finger as I slid the letter off his leg.
Deer Jaycee,
I miss u. Wen r u cuming home? Mummy gived me a bike tooday. It is blu. Thats uor favorit culler!
Love from
Emily xxxxxoooo
She had drawn a picture of her bike on the back of the paper. I smiled and folded the letter and placed it in the drawer next to my bed. Soon Emily, very soon. Mouse flew out of the window to the owlery and I pulled on the black robes crumpled next to my bed. The others weren't ready yet, but I wanted to get down to breakfast. I was hungry!
Singing softly to myself I skipped down the staircase and saw Remus at the bottom with his dorm mates James, Black and Peter. I quite liked James and Peter, but I couldn't stand Black. I mostly hung out with the four of them because apart from Mary the girls in my dorm were a bunch of cows, but I still could hardly tolerate that arrogant, annoying, insufferable toerag.
"Hey Remus, James, Peter" I gave each of them a quick hug before turning to glare at Black.
"What?" He demanded. "No hug for me, goldeyes?" He stuck out his tongue.
"Nope." I walked toward the door pulling Remus with me in my haste to get to food. "And DON'T call me gold eyes." I narrowed my eyes.
"Whatever you say, goldy." He smirked. "Lead on. I need FOOD!"
I growled under my breath.
V V V V V V
Lily, Alice and Mary came down not long after. Somehow, somewhere, Mary had befriended the two. I wasn't surprised. Everyone in the year liked Mary. Apart from a few of the Slytherins, but they didn't like anyone. Seeing me and Remus she led Lily and Alice over to where we were sitting with James, Peter and... that thing. We always sat together even though the majority of us disliked each other. It just sort of happened that way. Habit, I guess.
"Morning guys" she smiled brightly sitting next to Remus, who was patiently explaining my Potions homework to me. "Oh good. We're doing potions. Reckon you can do mine as well, Remy?"
He groaned, "bloody hell, you two, do you EVER listen in class? You're almost as bad as Sirius!"
Sirius, mouth stuffed with food, looked up. "Duhminersderchefme?" Everyone burst out laughing. Even I had to admit, it was pretty funny.
"That's disgusting, Sirius." Alice delicately stated when we were done laughing.
He carefully finished his mouthful and deliberately swallowed. "I said: Do mine ears deceive me?"
"Why?" Remus asked.
"I heard YOU tell HER she was almost better than ME at not listening." He scolded. "But we all know that NO ONE on the very planet we stand on, and quite possibly the very universe we live in, is better at not listening than me." He nodded.
"I reckon James could give you a run for your money, Black" I mumbled, seeing James in an almost trance. We watched as he pulled himself together and confronted the cause.
"Lily Evans." He stated with relish. "Go out with me?" His face was lit up with hope.
She rolled her eyes. "Never, Potter. You're so..."
"Stunningly handsome, astonishingly clever, and even rather humorous." He cut her off. Black chuckled at his best friend's failure.
"Arrogant."
"Hey mate!" He called from the other side, "That makes two of us!" He leaned across the table to give James a high five. He weakly returned it, looking a bit put out.
Black continued, "Goldy, here,"
"MY NAME IS JAYCEE!"
"Never passes an opportunity to remind me of my arrogance" he ignored my outburst.
I frowned, "you arrogant berk."
"See?" He pointed to me and nodded at James.
"You don't even deny it." I mumbled under my breath so only Remus could hear me. He snickered appreciatively.
Alice and Lily stood up. "Well," Alice said, "We're going to head off to class. There's only so much one can take of you lot this early in the morning." They linked arms and exited the great hall.
"Good." Peter muttered. "No one wanted you here anyway." This comment led to a round of high fives making Peter blush bright red. I had the feeling he probably wouldn't be friends with the three if he wasn't their dorm mate.
Potions isn't one of my favourite classes. By the end of a lesson, I've usually succeeded in melting a cauldron, blowing something up, or burning my partner's eyebrows off, which is a little unfortunate for poor Mary. Then again, she's not much better than I am. Slughorn must've put the two of us together to limit disasters in each group.
We have potions with the Slytherins, so of course the four boys, mainly James and Black, use the time shooting fireworks into cauldrons, messing with ingredients, and ultimately wreaking havoc. But Slughorn remains oblivious. He adores the two. They could probably get away with murder in his class. Lily and Remus are in the same boat. So is a Slytherin with long, greasy, black hair and a hooked nose called Severus who seems to be friends with Lily? They're partners for potions, leaving Alice to partner up with her cousin, Gwegnog Prewett.
"Today, class, we will be concocting the Cure for Boils. The ingredients and method," Slughorn strode to the blackboard and with one sweeping gesture to the board the ingredients list appeared, "Are on the board. You will have one lesson and I expect a sample vial of your completed potion each."
Mary and I looked at each other daring the other to say what we were both thinking.
"I'll prep the snake fangs, nettles, and porcupine quills" I grinned in feigned innocence.
"Oh that's so much to do though. Why don't I do those three? And then you can do the flobberworm mucus and the stewed slugs." She sweetly smiled back.
"Enough of this," I said, "I'll do the slugs nettles and quills. You do the mucus and fangs. They take longer" We nodded and headed off to the ingredients cupboard.
See, Mary and I had a method for potions class. We would prep all our ingredients first, dividing them in half once finished and then do the actual potion. We're usually the first two done if we can make it through a lesson without blowing something up. And that is a very rare occurrence.
60 sweaty minutes later our potions were done, in vials, and on Slughorn's desk. After congratulating ourselves for not killing anyone we joined up with the others and headed off to our very first flying lesson of the term.
I had been looking forward to this lesson, since we had first arrived at Hogwarts. And now, halfway through the semester, I was about to fly a broom. I wasn't the only one excited about today. James literally hadn't stopped talking about for it the past three months. We had gotten nothing but heroic stories about James zooming around on his dad's broom, saving defenceless muggles from certain death and the likes.
Mary had shared her finest moments on a broom with the rest of us as well. Black, despite coming from a family as "pure" as you could get -he honestly hadn't stopped complaining about what an awful family he came from and how everyone was judging him and blah blah blah- had never been on a broom. It was a sport deemed "unfit" in his parents' eyes. This didn't stop him from endless bragging about how good he was sure to be.
We stood in the crisp December air, watching our breath ascend and pulling our cloaks tighter around our bodies as we waiting for our teacher, late, to show up. I couldn't help but take a moment to appreciate how simply mystical the grounds looked covered in snow and the great lake frozen over with ice. My thoughtfulness was rudely interrupted by a wet, hard snowball to the side of the face.
"BLACK!" Merlin could he not remain calm for even a moment? Was it his chief goal in life to annoy me? Was he really that immature? But of course I had to retaliate. I packed some snow together and aimed at his air-filled, self-important head. Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by a flurry of snowballs coming from all direction as everyone joined in. I saw a line of brooms set out on a patch of grass where the snow had been melted behind us and ran over to grab one for a shield, but a shrill whistle sounded and we all hurriedly shuffled into a line, next to the broom of our choice. Madam Hooch had finally arrived. She paced back and forth in front of us.
"I will put that highly childish behaviour down to nerves," she smiled, her eyes crinkling, "When I blow my whistle, you will hold you dominant hand over your broom and confidently say 'UP!'" She gave a scrutinizing look as if sizing us up. "Brooms," she said, "can sense fear. If you are too weak in your command, you will get no response. Let's try it out." She blew her whistle and around me I heard my fellow Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws we had the class with shout, with varying degrees of confidence, UP.
James and Black proudly held their brooms. Everyone else was not doing so well. I look at my broom and narrowed my eyes, daring it to defy me.
"Up." I said firmly. It immediately sprung to my hand and I felt a kind of connection to it. It was strange, like when I had first held my wand.
"STOP!" Madam Hooch yelled. Brooms that had not obeyed were picked up manually, the offenders looking very bashful.
"Now that we all have our brooms," she glared at Peter, who had not picked his off the ground. After a moment he realized this comment was directed at him and clumsily picked his up too. "You will mount you broom like so and rise two or three, TWO OR THREE, feet into the air. Do not attempt to steer and then SLOWLY return to the ground." She demonstrated.
I flung my leg over my broom and felt it rise as if listening to my thoughts rather than grip. I looked at the tail, it was a Shooting Star. They were supposed to be really good. Not in the same league as the Nimbus 1000 of course, that being the latest and very fastest of all, but still good.
On the broom I felt a sense of security and freedom. I wanted to go higher. But despondently returned to the ground and dismounted. Not everyone had been so lucky. Lily was currently 20 feet in the air and still rising. She was white as a sheet and her knuckles were whiter still. She didn't utter a word, just silently mouthed desperate pleas for help. Madam Hooch was scolding James for disobeying her "direct orders" of not moving forward so hadn't yet noticed Lily's distress.
"Umm... Madam Hooch?" Alice pointed to Lily, but the teacher was issuing James with a detention.
Conveniently forgetting that I had never been on a broom before today and that the logical thing to do would be to just tell the teacher again I hopped back on my Shooting Star, oh so eager to feel that free and secure again, and pulled upwards.
The broom rose higher and higher and it grew steadily colder and colder. I had never felt better! I could see everything! The snap frozen air whipped through my already ruffled short hair blowing it into my eyes, but I could still sense where I was going. It was the most amazing feeling. I could hear Madam Hooch demanding I return to the ground immediately but "the wind was too loud to really hear properly." I reached Lily's level and grabbed the back of her broom. She lurched and screamed. My stomach dropped and suddenly I realized just how stupid I had been. What if we fell? Carefully, so carefully, I inched downwards, urging Lily to not let go. She nodded dumbly. A few heart-stopping minutes later we were both safely on the ground.
"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, AIGLEIGH?" Madam Hooch was red faced and spitting with rage.
"YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN BOTH OF YOU KILLED! WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST TELL ME!"
I looked at my feet, "I'm sorry, I didn't think properly." I mumbled to my shoes.
"DARN RIGHT YOU DIDN'T! You are suspended from flying for the next 3 lessons!"
What? NO! "Yes Madam Hooch."
I hung back and dragged my feet through the snow, taking my time to Herbology, on the other side of the gardens. Why did I have to go and do something like that? What good did it do? All because I wanted a few moments more in the air. And now I wouldn't be able to fly for 3 weeks!
"Um... Jaycee?" I heard Lily behind me.
Surprised, I replied, "Uh yeah?"
She must have sensed my astonishment because she giggled uncertainly.
"Look," she began, ". Thanks for helping me." She smiled tentatively.
It took me a while to decipher what she had just said but when I had I gave her the brightest smile I had and a big hug.
"It's not a big deal!" I gave her a friendly punch on the arm, "You weren't even that bad. I've seen worse, trust me." We continued on our way to Herbology, me with more of a spring in my step, glad that my act of stupidity had at least had one benefit. And as we were talking, I realized what a great sense of humour Lily had although she could be a bit girly and to be honest, a bit pathetic, at times. We were going to be good friends, I could just tell.
Thanks so much to GreyHaru! It really made my day getting your reviews :) Also thanks to everyone who favorited/alerted/read. I hope you guys are liking it. As you can see I don't seem to be able to stick to weekly updates haha. I'll just do my best to post as soon as possible (most likely 3 days at the very very most until I run out of prewrittens, but don't worry, I have every intention of finishing this fanfic)
