"Oh, Turpentine erase me whole / I don't want to live my life alone / I was waiting for you all my life" – "Honeybee" by Steam Powered Giraffe
"James, it wasn't my fault," Sirius said immediately, blocking his best friend's view by getting in his face the second he stepped through the door.
James blinked at him and leaned back, first in confusion and then suspicion, "What'd you do?" Sirius snatched the glasses off of his face and darted away, making James sigh and rub at his eyes, "Remus, how bad is it?"
Remus let out a growl instead, making James wince as he realized it was that bad. Bad enough that Remus wasn't actually talking and was instead nearly to the point of changing without a full moon. Also known as: very, very bad.
"What'd he do?" he asked, carefully easing into the house, afraid he'd trip over something without his glasses.
"Why don't you ask Hermione?" Remus finally said, although it was bitterly, "She's just in the upstairs bathroom freaking out about her hair."
"What's with her hair?" James asked with a frown. When Sirius was silent, he got out his wand and got his glasses back, frowning at Sirius as he crouched behind the coffee table, Remus sitting on the arm of the couch and glaring at him. "What happened?"
"We were working, she was doing great in Potions – actually, she's great at everything, but that's not the point here – and I go upstairs to find a third year Potions book – "
"Third year?" James asked with a small grin forming, "Didn't she start on first year this morning?"
"No, she was halfway through it," he answered back with a smile before shaking his head, "Anyway, I get downstairs to find that Sirius has drastically changed her hair."
"How?" James asked their friend with a glare. The two only glanced over to the staircase, Sirius fearfully and Remus sadly. James walked up it and knocked on the door.
"Sirius Black, if you think you can calm me down, you have another - !" Hermione stopped midsentence after opening the door, blinking at James as he gaped at her hair.
"It's blue," he blinked, "He turned your hair blue."
"Originally it was pink," her lower lip wobbled, "I tried washing it out and it turned blue."
"Oh he's dead," he breathed as he put his hands on either side of her face, wincing at her as he stared at the dripping strands. "If you don't kill him, I will marvel at your willpower."
"I just want my hair changed back, James," she whimpered.
"Sweetheart, we don't know how to change it to a less ridiculous color," he sighed, "We can go to a Muggle drug store and get some dye though, but that'll be about it."
"Don't wizards have a different money system?" At James's nod, she shook her head, "We can't buy any. Is there any way to match the color and make a potion or something?"
"We could try that, but it'd be trial and error," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders, an action that made both of them blush and have her snap back to grab her shirt and put it back on. "Err – s-sorry."
She coughed, looking away from him, "It's fine, I should've put it on before I – wow, sorry, that's umm…"
"Uhh, drug store?" he asked, still blushing brightly at her.
"Sure," she said, following him down the stairs.
"Hermione and I are going to the drug store to figure out how to duplicate a hair color and put it in a potion," James said, heading towards the front door, "Remus, feel free to eat Padfoot."
"Wait, what?" Hermione blinked until James grabbed her wrist and pulled her through.
"How did your hair look before?" he whispered to her, scanning the shelves with her.
"I don't know," she whispered back, staring at the boxes blankly, looking utterly lost. "I never really paid much attention. It was brown – I know that much."
"Well…pick a brown then," he shrugged.
"How are we going to know what color though?" she questioned, looking up at him, "We can't just take home 'E5' or 'dark brown' and expect something to happen, can we?"
James stared blankly at her before finally speaking, "We didn't think this through."
"Anything I can help you with?" a salesperson asked curiously, looking between her and James. She had pale blonde hair that hung in ringlets, held away from her freckled face with a headband.
"Umm, just looking," Hermione answered, still staring blankly at the boxes, "But thank you."
"Miss, if you don't mind my saying," she tugged on a blue curl, "I think you might need my help. It was brown before, right?"
"Uhh, yeah, but we can't exactly buy any," she said, taking back her hair politely, "We don't have the right kind of money."
"Oh, are you foreign?" she asked curiously, although somehow warily as well.
"Err…you might say that," James answered.
She stared at them for a few moments before tilting her head at them, "Have you ever heard of Hogwarts?"
James picked his head up and blinked at her, "Yeah, uhh, I went there."
She smiled, grinning brightly at the two, "I get off in three minutes, give me that much and I can fix your hair, Sweetheart."
"Oh, wait, but – " Hermione tried to stop her, but she was already walking back up the aisle. She watched her go before looking up at James curiously, him looking down at her the same way. "Should we stay?"
"I dunno – she could be dangerous," he whispered back, glancing towards the windows, "And it's nearly dark."
"James," Hermione snorted, "She works at a nearly empty drug store. If she wanted to kill us, she could've done it now."
"There's windows, there's witnesses," he chided.
"Well you could do that blippy thing and get us out of here."
"Blippy thing?" he repeated, rather offended.
"That thing where we go 'pop'," she tried.
"Apparation?" he frowned, "You called Apparation a 'blippy thing'?"
"Well I don't know the name of it, I'd only ever experienced it twice, and both times I never bothered to ask the name of it," she huffed.
He snorted and rolled his eyes as the woman walked back up to them, her apron off and smiling. "Blippy thing," he repeated under his breath, "Honestly."
"My name is Josette, by the way, but you can call me Jo or Josie," she smiled, extending her hand to Hermione.
"I'm Hermione, this is James," Hermione smiled as well, "Thank you for bothering to fix my mess of hair."
"It's fine – who did it?" she questioned.
"One of our flat mates," she sighed, letting Jo pick curiously through the curls.
"Ahh, thought you had a prankster boyfriend on your hands," she chuckled.
"B-boyfriend?" Hermione sputtered, accidentally making a blue strand pluck away. James's eyes went wide as well, whipping his head around to the woman.
"We're not dating," James waved away any assumptions as Jo blinked at the reaction she was getting. "No, no we're not – wow, didn't even think how it'd look – but we're not."
"I just thought – sorry, easy mistake to make, you two where whispering an awful lot, assumptions were made…." Jo trailed off before starting to grin again, "Are you ready? I've got everything at my flat."
"Oh, that's not suspicious," James murmured with a roll of his eyes.
"My father is in the French Ministry of Magic," Jo muttered back with a smirk, "My mother is an Auror. If I even put a toe in that direction, I'd be dead in a second."
He blinked at her before grinning sheepishly, "Assumptions were made and everything…."
"Ah-hah," she chuckled, turning back to Hermione, "You alright with Apparation, Love?"
"Sure," she said, glaring at James as he began to grin, mouthing out 'blippy thing' to her. She stuck her tongue out at him as Jo turned her back to them, making him snort in response.
Hermione clung to Jo's arm as her feet were swept out from under her, the air leaving her lungs for a moment as her head spun. James grabbed an arm and towed her up to her feet, holding her shoulders as she teetered.
"I thought you said you were alright with Apparation?" Jo asked worriedly.
"It's a new concept with me," she said breathlessly, clinging to James now as she'd tried to move. "Only ever used in extreme moments of panic, so I never noticed."
"It's a weird story with her," James said as Hermione rubbed at her temples, Jo moving to the kitchen to begin picking through cabinets.
"You can go ahead and start explaining, this'll take quite a few hours to make," she said as Hermione finally focused.
She dropped her jaw and gaped, "Is that the Eiffel Tower?"
"Oh, yeah, welcome to Paris!" she pulled her head out of a cabinet and grinned.
"Paris?" Hermione asked, beaming at Jo brightly, "You live in Paris? I've always wanted to go to Paris!"
"And now you're here!" she grinned back.
"I'm in Paris!" she gave a laugh, "I'm in Paris and I have blue hair!"
"Welcome to the world of magic, Sweetheart," she chuckled, not unkindly. "So, what's the story?"
"Well, we don't really know all of it," James sighed, sitting down at the island and watching as she busied her hands, Hermione staring out the large windows to the balcony that lead to the fading sun and famous monument. "But she was adopted when she was a baby and was pretty neglected by these awful people and their daughter. My friend's dog finds her and after a small blow-out with her and the family, led her to our house, where she learned about magic. I was wondering why the Ministry wasn't investigating a Muggle knowing about magic, so I looked into her memories. McGonagall had come to her house on her eleventh birthday to ask the adoptive parents to let her come to Hogwarts, but they refused and she has no memory of anything happening after that. So we decided to teach her, with the approval of Hogwarts's headmaster, and things were going okay for a while. The family caught her and found out she knew about magic, and pulled out wands and attempted to kill her. I stepped in, and now she's living with me and my two friends."
Jo's eyebrows had slowly gone up during the story, her jaw popping open when he'd said that somebody had wanted to kill her, but she put them all back into place with a shake of her head, "Wow, okay. Weird."
"Yeah," James agreed as she began to stir things into a cauldron. "Where did you go to school?"
"Beauxbatons," she answered, "I don't have much of the French accent because I have an English aunt who I've lived with every summer and holiday since I was two. Mum and Dad get tired of running through the streets of magnifique Paris so much, so they thought England was a good vacationing spot. I didn't complain much, because my aunt is wicked cool. Oh, and my cousin, Angelique, she went to Hogwarts, just a little fourth year, know her?"
"Last name?" James asked curiously as Hermione finally walked up to them.
"Sylvette," she answered.
"Oh, little bit on the short side, short brown hair?" he asked, making her beam and nod, "Yeah, got onto me and Padfoot for – " He noticed that Hermione was back with them and looking at him curiously, clearing his throat and waving his hand around vaguely, "For something, forget what."
"You're James Potter?" Jo leaned across the island and blinked at him, "Angie's been writing to me about you four for ages, saying how you guys made Hogwarts tolerable!"
"Us?" James snorted, blinking at her, "Tolerable? Oh no, you must've gotten the wrong Marauders then."
"She said that she hated being all alone in first year and one of them – oh, what was his name? – sat with her in the library and helped her make friends."
"Library?" Hermione grinned, her hands in her jacket pockets, "Was it Remus?"
"Yes!" Jo bounced up with a beam, waving her hand, "And she said that the other two who could've passed for brothers were hilarious, always getting on the teachers' nerves and causing some type of commotion."
"James and Sirius, surely," Hermione smiled as James shrugged at her, grinning.
"And there was one other that she wrote about, but she didn't really like him all that much," Jo said thoughtfully as she dropped in a pomegranate.
James's face clouded over and he glared at the countertop, "Yeah, we don't like him all that much either."
"Oh dear – what's with that face?" she asked as Hermione looked at him curiously. There had been a fourth one? Why had they never said that?
James sighed and continued to glare at the surface, fiddling with his jacket sleeve, "Turns out he was a Death Eater. Framed one of my best friends for killing a dozen Muggles, and he nearly got away with it if I hadn't…." James started over with a sigh, "Sirius doesn't always think before he acts or speaks, very rarely does he. So when Peter said that he'd killed me – I'd just had a nasty accident on the Quidditch pitch, and a lot of people thought I was dead – Sirius followed him into Muggle London, where Peter killed the Muggles and blamed it on Sirius. Everybody would've bought it if I hadn't come to and pointed out that I'd had Sirius's wand."
"Why'd you have his wand?" Hermione asked, sitting down beside him.
James grinned and shook his head, running his hand through his hair, "Sirius was swearing that he'd set off fireworks if our team won. That'd be terribly embarrassing for me, being the new guy and all, so I took his wand."
"So what happened to Peter?" Jo asked curiously.
"Sent to Azkaban, probably got the Dementor's Kiss or something," he shrugged with a wince.
"Sent to where, got a what?" Hermione blinked.
James turned to her and grinned, "Azkaban is a wizarding prison. Dementors are creatures that basically suck the happiness out of you, and their 'kiss' can suck out your soul and leave you a hollow shell."
Hermione leaned a little away from him and fidgeted, "Sounds creepy."
"It really is," he agreed.
"So, do you guys have a while or do you just want to jet?" Jo asked, "I could show you the Louvre or Centre Pompidou once your hair is back to normal."
Hermione brightened and beamed at her as James grinned and chuckled at Hermione's reaction.
"I'll pass, but I think Hermione's up to it," James said. "I can come pick you up in a few hours if you want."
"Alright!" Hermione said happily as Jo beamed as well. As James stood to leave, Jo stopped him with a frown.
"I thought I was a suspicious character?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Nah – anybody related to Angel can't be that bad," he grinned, "See you in a bit, girls." And with that, he popped away.
I honestly didn't know what Jo's name would be, but I knew I wanted her in the story. She's a bit older than the boys if you didn't catch that. She didn't really have a name.
