Disclaimer: I own nada in the Harry Potter series.
A/N: Thanks for the reviews. Well, enjoy this chapter! Don't forget to give me some feedback, I'd certainly appreciate it, since I decided I'm just going to go ahead and continue this story.
Also, I have to give some credit to Lunatikk for the inspiration for James's prank. Thanks! :D
The Ultimate Prank War
Chapter 7: Blue Rainbows
James's POV
"This is all your bloody fault."
"My fault? How is it my fault?"
I glared at the redheaded beauty seated diagonally across the room from me. Of course, I could never really glare at her. It was more of a pained grimace. I could never really be mad at her because I, in all actuality, really like Lily.
And, apparently, the whole school knows it now. Thanks to that damn prank.
"If you hadn't of caused that stupid hurricane," I continued, "then we wouldn't be in this situation, would we?"
I could feel Lily's short-ended temper flaring up at me like a furnace. "Of course we would! You caused a thunderstorm too, you know! It's absolutely your whole bloody fault!"
"Fine, it's both our faults, OK?" I really hated arguing with Lily. Especially when we were supposed to be keeping quiet in detention. Professor Flitwick hadn't assigned us anything to do, since he was in a hurry and completely forgot about detention, but had one request: "Just sit there and get along, OK?" Not that I ever followed the rules or anything, but I didn't have the best temper at the moment.
Why? Well, to start, I was at a disadvantage in the prank war. Lily had used the Veritaserum to spill out all of the Marauders' secrets about upcoming pranks. That strong potion had taken a total control of my senses, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. It was a strong spell that, for once, had nothing to do with a wand.
And, secondly, I was embarrassed. Think about it for a second. I was the heartthrob of Hogwarts, untouchable, perfect reputation for not being caught surprised. Unlike the pudding incident, people were expecting something to happen. They were expecting the Marauders to do something great, expecting us to have a way to avoid everything.
But it didn't happen. All because Peter ran into bloody Mary Macdonald.
How's that for karma?
"Fine," Lily said in a clipped tone. "Let's just finish out the detention in peace."
"Good with me," I grumbled. Come to think of it, I was in a really bad mood if I was grumbling at the love of my life.
Which is the strangest part of all. I could only see Lily Evans in my mind, and no other girl. Whenever I wanted to ask someone out, her disapproving expression popped in front of my eyes – not at asking a girl out, of course, just out of annoyance at me – and I quickly turned the other way. I don't know what spell she had me under, but it was a pretty strong one.
But of course, silence never seemed to last with a questioning Evans in the room. "What you said… under the Veritaserum, I mean. Did… did you mean it?"
"No, of course not, you got a cup of false Veritaserum and I lied my way through the whole thing."
Apparently, my sarcasm was wasted on her.
"Yes, of course, Lily. I meant every word. How strong was that damn potion, anyway?"
"Pretty strong," I heard her mutter from behind me.
"Exactly. I told the honest truth, Lily, like it or not."
There was a stretching silence in the air, which seemed very uncommon for a curious Lily. She was always asking questions about everything, but my answer seemed to block the heavy flow of them.
I twisted in my seat, turning to face her. She was biting her lip, seeming to fight another question she was going to ask. I raised my eyebrows, and she said, "Even the part about… about you liking me?"
"Yes, Lily. I like you a lot. A whole lot." I smiled a little, trying to show her I was completely sincere. She seemed to believe me, but didn't smile back.
"It… doesn't seem real."
"Well, believe it, because it's true."
She nodded her head silently, and I mentally thanked Professor Flitwick for taking our wands as I asked the next question.
"So… go out with me? Hogsmeade? Next weekend?"
"You're still the enemy," she said, smiling a little but rolling her beautiful green eyes all the while.
"You know, the whole enemies-fall-in-love thing. Romeo and Juliet?"
"You read Shakespeare?" Lily asked me with a bemused expression.
I nodded my head. "Of course." In all honesty, I liked old English literature. Padfoot was constantly trying to pry the books from my hands, labeling any type of reading as 'sinful'.
"You read?"
I scowled. We were back to our normal ways. But why wasn't it fine with me? "When the prank war is over?"
"Not on your life, Potter."
"Right, Evans. Heard you loud and clear."
Sirius's POV
"Greenfold! Oi, wait up!"
Jadyn turned her head to look at me. Damn, did she look good! I mean, come on. Any guy had to admit Jadyn was pretty hot in an exotic kind of way. With the streaks in her hair that accented her eyes and quick-witted personality, she was a force to be reckoned with.
And the best part? She totally wanted me. She just didn't know it yet.
But too bad she was a bitch half of the time.
I quickened my pace to fall into step with her and poked her in the arm. James had sent me on this mission, to distract Jadyn while he pulled the latest prank. And so what if I was going to have a little fun with my task? Could he blame me?
Jadyn glared a little, her blue eyes sending one disbelieving glance to my face. "Go away, Black. I can't exactly deal with you at the moment."
"Why? Distracted by someone?"
"Not really. Just… homesick." She gave me a little half-smile – they looked quite nice on her, if she actually smiled at me for once, the little ungrateful witch – and turned her gaze forward again.
"Homesick?"
"For home. You know that, Sirius Black. Or are you dumber than you look?"
"Very funny, Greenfold. But you've been going to this school for a while. I mean, only the first years get homesick anymore."
She shot me a glare for my mocking remarks. "I'm not talking about home in England, Black."
"What bloody home could you be talking about then?"
Her gaze was chastising. But, come on, seriously. She liked me. Really. "Home for me is back in the United States. Didn't you notice my accent after five years?"
I stared at her with a blank face. Honestly, all in all, I didn't really care much about ethnicity or anything. I was doing my best to forget my own heritage at the moment. And plus, when I was snogging a girl, who cared how she talked? Just what she looked like was all that mattered to me.
But, by the way Jadyn stared fiercely at me, it seemed like normal people noticed stuff like that. Dammit.
"Sort of," I lied. "You see, I've never been great with languages."
"Obviously, by your ability to speak the only one you ever knew with limited vocabulary."
I pouted a little. "Don't blame me for being close-minded. I just… never got around to anything strange like that."
She was losing interest – I could tell it in her eyes. James would be furious if I let her spoil his newest prank, so I resorted to desperate measures.
"You so want me, Greenfold."
Her blue eyes seemed to bug out of her head, and she stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. "What the hell?"
I was beginning to think American accents were hotter every second. Man, did she make them sound good.
"You want me." I shrugged. "But it's OK, you know. Because practically every other girl in the school does. Why should that make you any different?"
Her face was red with rage. The one thing I had learned about Jadyn Greenfold, if anything in all these years, is that she hated being everyone else. She loved being unique and different, and seemed to murder anyone who said different.
Looks like I was on top of her hit list today. Goody, goody!
"Black, listen. I don't know what kind of sick universe you live in where I don't hate you and you don't hate me," she started, and I was moving back up against the wall. All in honesty, she was really, really scaring me at the moment. "But I certainly as hell do not want you."
"OK, chill out, Greenfold!" I removed her pointed finger from my chest, although I couldn't help but wonder why she had gotten so incredibly worked up over one silly comment. It was just a conversation starter, anyway. More like a placeholder to bide James some time. "Can we keep walking? I'm sure you have some work to do to keep from failing."
"We? I will continue down this hallway. You, Black, will stumble back to whatever hole you crawled from and stay there." With that, she turned on her heel and started down the corridor again.
"Hey, hey, hey, that wasn't very nice," I said, running to catch up with her again. "You could have at least had a pleasant parting word or two."
"That was pleasant."
"Pleasant? I doubt it."
"You want to hear my worst?"
"No, thanks," I muttered. Why couldn't James have sent Moony or Wormtail to distract her? Jadyn certainly got along a lot better with them than, say, me.
You caused it, you know, that annoying little voice known as a conscience – Moony told me I had one somewhere in the cobwebs of my mind – said in the back of my head. Most of the time, it kept quiet, but now? Not so much. Probably because Jadyn brought it out. She brought a lot of things out in the open lately, like our pranks yesterday.
"So… where are you heading?"
"Nowhere," she answered curtly as she turned down into the third floor corridor.
"Nowhere isn't an accurate statement, I think."
"You know, why can't you just bug off?" Jadyn suddenly whipped on me, her eyes livid and unpredictable. "You've been following me for like, half an hour now, and it's really annoying! Go snog some girl."
"No, no, no," I said. Sirius Black did not just snog girls. I did have excellent taste in the looks department. Brains? Not so much. But why did a girl need them when making out with me? "I don't just pick any girl."
Jadyn started walking again, while I just stood there. Screw tracking her – I was deeply offended. "Oh, really? Then what girls do you pick?"
"Girls that don't go around leaving me standing in the middle of a corridor!"
I don't know what prompted me to say it – hell, was I even aware of half the stuff that left my mouth? – but she was about to open her mouth and respond with Merlin knows what when I heard a high-pitched cackling.
And it could only signal one thing.
"Oh, Sirie, old dearie! Up to distracting antics, are we? Peevsie knows, Blackie, Peevsie knows!"
"Shut up and bug off, you transparent poltergeist," I grumbled up to the ceiling where Peeves was hovering. Jadyn, on the other hand, was staring up at Peeves with a curious look on her face. One that seemed way, way too curious for her own good. Or anyone else's good, for that matter.
Peeves's grin became only more widespread, and it looked like his pasty skin was going to rip in two. Not that I would mind, the evil prick. "Oh, Blackie doesn't want me revealing anything, now does he?"
"Peeves," Jadyn intervened, and I gave her a look. A look that hopefully conveyed that she better tell him to freak off or I was going to do her some bodily damage. She obviously didn't see it, since she went on with, "What exactly does Mr. Black here not want revealed?"
"Just that I saw someone, Potty wee Potter, riding up on his ratty ol' broomstick to the girls' dormitory. Naughty, naughty, naughty little ickle friend you've got there, Blackie!"
I was purposefully grunting and making distracting noises throughout Peeves's whole dialogue, but it was way too late. The realization of James working on a prank dawned on Jadyn, and the first thing she did was spit, "You dirty little git, Sirius Black!" and then dart the other way, heading towards who-knows-where.
What I couldn't figure out was why her voice cracked on 'git'.
Instead, I just glared up at the evil little ghost above me when Jadyn's footsteps finally faded away. "Thanks a lot, dearest Peevsie."
"Don't mention it, wee little Sirius Blackie." And then he took off into the ceiling, cackling the evil laughter I'd suddenly learned to loathe.
Lily's POV
I stepped out of the bathtub, reaching for a towel. Getting up early to take my baths was a great idea. The prefects' bathroom was never occupied, and I got to spend as much time in there – thus away from James – as possible.
The rest of the detention last night hadn't been that terrible, nonetheless. We had simply sat there talking – well, mostly James asking me out and me rejecting – until Professor Flitwick had come back in and dismissed us. We had tried to look bored and upset like people in detention should have, but it was incredibly hard.
Now, after a good night's sleep, I was ready to face the day, despite the fact that James was still probably planning a prank as I bathed. Which was a very, very bad thing. He was definitely looking to get me good this time around. The Veritaserum had caused school wide mortification, and he was looking to do exactly the same to me.
Suddenly, there was some frantic pounding. I whipped around to face the door to the bathroom. Obviously, someone needed an explanation on bathroom curtsey.
"Lily! Lily! Merlin, Lily, I know you're there, so open up!"
I immediately recognized Jadyn's voice and, making sure the towel was tightly wrapped around me, opened the door.
"Lily, you – Oh, Merlin. No."
As soon as her eyes set foot on me, they opened up wide and she was just openly gaping now.
"What? Do I have dirt on my face? Honestly, I just took a bath." I headed over to the many mirrors set in the grand bathroom I was in…
And stopped dead in my tracks. Because I wasn't even sure if I was looking at me anymore.
"It's… a little more than dirt," Jadyn said, but I couldn't really hear her.
Because my hair was rapidly changing colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and back again. Over and over and over. My beautiful dark red hair was seven different shades in a matter of one second. Then the cycle would start over again. It was fading in and out of the colors, changing every single second. If I didn't know any better, I'd say I was a Metamorphmagus.
"Is this what you were going to warn me about?" I asked in a faint voice. This didn't seem real – at all. My hair… ruined… by James bloody Potter…
"Sort of. Peeves said he saw James by our dorm. Must've switched your shampoo to color-changing stuff." Jadyn was right next to me with a mirrored expression of shock.
I sighed loudly, as exasperated as one could sound when their anger was bubbling up. "So, got any plans to get 'em back?"
"Nope," Jadyn replied.
And we just watched my hair change colors like it was Christmas bulbs, thinking of how dead James Potter would be with our next prank.
A/N: I'd really appreciate a review from you :)
