CHAPTER TEN

The First Day of School

The next day saw Remus up before any of his classmates. Despite Peter's loud snoring - the boy had also some how kicked off all his blankets and kicked open the curtains and was laying upside down in his bed – and despite James talking in his sleep Remus slept very well, his four poster bed was warm and comfortable and he felt more at home in his dormitory in one night than he had at his parent's home his whole life. Still he had realized last night it might be tricky hiding everything from the others. His scars, for instance. Or his injuries because he rarely didn't have a bandage on some part of his body.

Then there was the contract itself which had nearly given him away last night. Remus bundled up his clothes and toothbrush and went into the bathroom where he ran the shower and stripped to clean himself, carefully unwrapping the bandages on his arms and legs. He got dressed in his robes and brushed his teeth. By the sounds coming from the other room one of the other boys were up, and sure enough Sirius stumbled into the bathroom looking like he was still asleep.

"Mornin'." He mumbled then pushed Remus out of the bathroom to use the loo.

"Morning." Remus mumbled back, the bathroom door shut behind him. In the dorm, James had had his covers pulled off but had gone back to sleep. Remus looked at Peter and figured he'd better wake up the shorter boy.

"Peter? Get up." He said shaking the boy, he did the same to James and proceeded to pack his own bag, though he didn't know which books he'd need that day.

"Sirius?" Remus asked. Sirius emerged from the shower in his pants toweling off his hair.

"Hmmm?"

"How do we know what classes we have?" Remus asked. Sirius looked at him, throwing a shoe at James who yelled out when it knocked him in the head. He threw another shoe at Peter, who also woke up with a pained noise as it hit him rather forcefully in the stomach.

"They will hand out timetables. Leave your stuff up here we can come back to grab it." He said.

"Okay, thanks." Remus said. "I'm going to walk down, want to come?"

"Nah I'm going to cover James in water," Sirius said, digging out his cauldron and heading to the bathroom.

"Wait," Remus said, pulling out his wand he concentrated and said 'agumenti' then muttered a second spell to make the water icy cold.

Sirius dunked his knuckles in the water and grinned.

"Excellent." He praised. Remus smiled, James had been woken at least three times.

"Get Peter up too will you?" Remus said as he left the dorm and attempted to navigate his way back to the great hall.

It wasn't as difficult as he'd first thought. He could smell breakfast, for starters which helped and there was a steady trickle of students going to breakfast. So as long as the crowd was followed he would be fine.

The hall was just as magnificent as the previous night the candles now unlit but sunlight streaming through the roof Remus couldn't help but smile at the hall as he took a seat at Gryffindor table. Sausages and hash browns, bubble and squeak, brown sauce, cereals and juices, quiche Loraine and just about every other breakfast type food Remus had ever heard of and may more he'd never known about. Remus though got himself a bowl of cereal, because he always had cereal for breakfast and though the greasy sausages and omelettes and such looked delicious he knew food like that this early in the morning would upset his stomach.

It wasn't long before Sirius and James joined him, James' hair was still dripping onto his shirt.

"Morning." Remus greeted him, now actually a bit worried James wouldn't like him anymore since he helped tip the water on him, did any of the boys like him in the first place. Did they know about his condition and Remus just remembered he'd left his contract in his book bag upstairs!

"Well played, you two are even more vicious than my mum," James said, a grin on his face. He shook his head and water rained on the table making some of the girls cry out in outrage.

"You're such a toerag!" Lily snapped at him and he smiled like she'd given him a complement which annoyed her and she stood and huffed off to the Slytherin table to sit with Severus.

"She's into you mate," Sirius said sitting down with a plate of sausages. James followed his lead piling up his own plate with sausages.

"Yeah that was the obvious sign of a girl in love." James said, "I'll win her over, you watch."

Remus ate his breakfast in relative silence until professor McGonagall began to hand out timetables. She was, he was told by one of the older girl prefects, their head of house. Remus studied the timetable that was handed to him. It seemed simple enough. Today it looked like they would be having potions, then charms and double herbology. He was very excited about the start of his classes, he expected them to be very similar to classes he'd had with his father back at home.

"Potions is in the dungeons." Sirius said, "with professor Slughorn. My father wouldn't shut up about how Slughorn had been his favorite professor. Goes on about his stupid parties and how he's always happy to help him out when he writes." Sirius shook his head.

"My dad said Slughorn likes to surround himself with the best and brightest students, call in Favors later. No wonder he's the head of Slytherin. My dad said there isn't a witch or wizard who went bad that wasn't in Slytherin." James added loudly.

Barclay Weasley, the head boy leaned over with a frown.

"My brother says that too," he says, "even though my mother was in Slytheirn house when she went to school here. Your house doesn't matter once you finish school so don't use it as an excuse to start fights!" He insisted. James laughed at the boy. Who looked rather angry. Remus wanted to apologize for his dorm mate but didn't.

The first years stood with a prefect who took them out of the great hall to fetch their books and then down into the dungeons for their very first lesson.

The dungeons were rather dark with high vaulted ceiling filled with a hazy kind of vapor. There were some cauldrons in the back of the room which James and Sirius had taken it upon themselves to go peer into.

"Bugger off boys those are for my sixth years." Their professor called out and James and Sirius darted down to take a seat next to Remus. Slughorn looked over his class and the class looked back at him. He was a middle aged man with a bushy brown mustache and rather stretched waistcoat - stretched over his very round belly.

His robes were fine and emerald green and he seemed jolly enough. Then the door bashed open and Peter Pettigrew came barreling into the room his hair wet and tie crooked. Sirius laughed, as did James but Slughorn didn't look overly impressed.

"Sorry-sorry sir. I overslept." Peter said and came to sit by Remus.

"Why didn't you wake me?" Peter asked sounding very hurt.

"I did," Remus replied, Sirius nodded.

"We even threw water over your head Pettigrew." This earned a chorus of laughter from the class and professor Slughorn had to shush them.

"Right, right, right, quiet down. Pettigrew is it? Watch that. I'll let it go for today but you can't go making a habit out of being late for class. Now today we're going to learn about the aging potion. This is always a fun day so open up your books to page 23 and pull out your kits," they were instructed and the class did just that.

Remus had never made a potion before as his father didn't really care for them. Slughorn made a point of demonstrating how to cut, chop, crush, peel and slice each of the ingredients as well as quizzing the students. Severus Snape answered every question correctly earning Slytherin a boatload of points, which drew the attention of James and Sirius.

Remus could see their plan, to lob a shrivel fig into Severus and Lily's cauldron, which he would tell them not to but he himself was too busy trying to fix the mess Peter had made of their potion.

The cauldron was shaking and hissing, and his taking off the fire simply made the thing belch acrid purple fumes.

Slughorn came to them by this point and added a few things to the mix and it seemed to fix itself.

"Measure your ingredients properly boys," he warned, though he was looking at Peter and not Remus. Remus put a hand on James' arm, loaded with shrivel fig.

"Don't you'll get Gryffindor into trouble." He warned. James seemed to agree and nodded, just as Severus and Lily were both awarded points for their potion.

The next lesson on the list was charms, which was in a classroom on the second floor and was taught by a very short, but young wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over the lectern.

He talked the whole hour about magical theory and how to correctly hold your wand and the difference between jinxes, hexes, curses and charms. Remus' hand was quite sore from his furious note taking with the quill and ink which he wasn't used to writing with - his mother always gave him a pencil.

After the hour of note taking the boys had lunch. Then it was a relief to be walking outside into the bright sunny afternoon air for their first Herbology lesson. They had a prefect guiding them to greenhouse one, but stopped on the lawn out the front.

Four wizards were levitating a large swaying tree with long rope like branches. A rough looking man was yelling orders and the other professors were yelling back until the tree was set down and firmly planted in the ground. The male professor cast a charm on the tree and the branches seemed to come alive and began trying to beat the professors, they all stepped back, and one of them a short man with a round belly, bald head and scruffy beard walked over to them.

"Hello first years," he said cheerfully. "I'm Professor Montmortency. I'm your Herbology professor." The professor looked between the gaping students and the violent tree.

"The school's new whomping willow, excellent isn't it, we're lucky to have it. Very rare species. Though I would suggest keeping your distance." He advised. Remus noticed Lily nod furiously still staring at the tree. Remus guessed they were probably very rare because no one wanted them.

Herbology went by without incident. Montmortency lecturered about the rules of working in the greenhouse and then made them all test their protective gloves by dipping them in diluted bobuter pus, but Peter's gloves did have a hole and he was taken to the hospital wing by Montmortency to have the large red welts on his hands healed.

The first years were let go early and spilled out onto the lawn again. Remus, Sirius and James decided to walk over to the quidditch pitch to have a look, they were halfway across the lawn when someone called to them, her voice high and mocking, talking like you would speak to a baby.

"If it isn't Ickle Sirius." The girl said gleefully. She was flanked by two other slytherins, both boys one with dark hair and the other was Lucius Malfoy. "What's mummy and daddy going to say about the heir to the house of black going into Gryffindor?" She asked. Her friends laughed, Sirius to his credit, rolled his eyes. The girl was quite tall, her robes fit her well. She was also very beautiful in a wild sort of way. Her curly black hair looked soft and shiny, her eyes were heavily lidded and her lips full, her cheekbones were high and delicate but she wore a sneer on her face that made her look like the most unnatractive girl Remus had ever seen. She had an angry glint in her eye when she looked at Sirius.

"Sod off Bella," Sirius said in a small voice, "Mum and dad will get over it. It's not the end of the world." He pointed out. Bella laughed at him. Still in her annoying baby voice.

"Bit frightened Siri? Mummy will scream at you for sure." She cackled, Remus noticed James reaching into his robes for his wand. "This might even be the last straw," Bella continued, "you'll get blasted off the tapestry!" She squealed gleefully. She pulled her wand and pointed it at Sirius, who flinched and took a big step back, Remus reacted on instinct and pulled his own wand. Bella used hers to cast a burning hex, which the thre first years ducked out of the way of, there was a huge bang and dirt rained on them from where the missed curse struck, Sirius fell over, and Remus sent a stinging hex at Bella. She cried out, then, dropping the baby voice yelled "who did that?!" She'd let go of her wand, and the dark haired boy was scraping around on the ground to fetch it.

Sirius Jumped up and was laughing as he pulled Remus and James away with him, running from Bella and her friends, a few spells followed them as they ran off, James cried out as a burning hex grazed his elbow.

When they were back in the common room they stopped, panting, smiling, James was trying to look at his grazed elbow.

"Bloody hell," James grimaced.

"My cousin Bellatrix Black," Sirius said, "nasty piece of work, would not recommend."

"I can see that," James muttered, Sirius pulled his wand and healed the wound.

"You said you didn't know much magic!" James accused, Sirius shrugged.

"I don't know much, at least not as much as Remus. Thanks for that mate." Sirius clapped Remus on the shoulder. Remus shook his head.

"I'll have to get much better at duelling if I keep going around stinging the Slytherins, I'll get into trouble." Remus lamented.

"Ha!" Sirius waved off Remus' concernes. "They'll not chuck you out for hexing those muppets."

But then Remus remembered that yes, they would. Hexing students was against school rules, and that meant Remus had already broken the terms of the toad-lady's contract… on his first day.