Tuesday was an important day for Kat. She'd finally been able to successfully vanish her kittens in Transfiguration without leaving any whiskers behind. To celebrate, James surprised her in the common room with his arms full of fresh baked cauldron cakes and peach cobbler.
"Where in the world did you get all of this?" Kat asked as James dumped his load onto the table she was sitting at by the window. She had been labeling her drawing of a knarl and listing the ways you could distinguish it from a hedgehog. Mr. Snowy was sitting on her lap.
"Oh, that's another secret," he said teasingly. He snapped her Care of Magical Creatures textbook shut, folding her knarl drawing in half in the process. "Take a break from all this work and celebrate your Transfiguration stuff!"
"Hey! I've been working on that for ages!" Kat picked up her drawing and began to gingerly smooth out the crease that went straight between the creature's eyes. "And tell me where—" James silenced her by stuffing a cake into her mouth.
"Shh," he said soothingly. "Don't speak." James sat down across from Kat and ran his hands through his hair before picking up another cake. He happily began munching on it and stared around at the other students working while Kat worked furiously to unstick her mouth of the cauldron cake.
"Wheredijeewgetdisfoo?" She asked thickly.
"Oh, need something to wash it all down?" Kat glared at him, but she couldn't really be angry. The cauldron cake was delicious and she did need a distraction from her homework and her thoughts. Her brain was still running double time from discovering that Remus was a werewolf. She nodded and James waved his wand and a goblet of pumpkin juice appeared on the table. He raised it and Kat took a swig.
Wiping her mouth on her sleeve (James raised an eyebrow at this, Kat ignored that) she asked, "Where did you get that from? I thought we couldn't make food out of nothing. It's one of those laws of magic or something."
"Oh, yeah. Well I have an arrangement with the house elves in the kitchens. They're a bunch of helpful little chums of mine."
"The kitchens? That's where you got all of this?" James nodded happily. "You have to take me there!" Making friends with the house elves was exactly something she wanted to do. It was all thanks to a house elf that she had been able to escape from her parents at all. Good old Iggy had convinced her parents to let her out on the moor, and so she had run for it. She stood up so quickly that she almost upended the table and Mr. Snowy spilled out of her lap. Kat gave a little scream and picked him up, checking to see if he was okay. Mr. Snowy's nose continued to twitch as if nothing had happened.
"Hold on, hold on," James said, dragging her back down into her seat. "I'll take you there if you do something for me first." He was looking serious, a look that James almost never wore.
"Um, okay?"
"I need you to ask Evans what kind of flower she likes."
Kat stared at him in silence with a grin quickly spreading over her face. "You want me to ask Lily Evans what her favorite flower is?"
"Yes, alright? Valentine's Day is on Friday and I want to ask her out again with some flowers." Kat giggled. "You got a problem with that?"
"Of course not, James," she scoffed. "I just don't think having flowers for her is going to change how she feels about you."
"Well you don't know about the magic of Valentine's Day then!"
Kat gave up on trying to stifle her giggles and burst into a raucous peal of laughter. "Oh, alright. I'll ask her what her favorite flower is. Now take me to see the house elves!"
"Not so fast, Missy."
"Missy?"
"Yes, not so fast, Missy! You have to come back with some real intell as to what her favorite flower is, yeah? Then I'll take you to the kitchens."
Kat started laughing again. "Okay, okay. I'll get your 'intell'."
James grinned and picked up another cauldron cake. "Fantastic."
The pair continued to eat their way through the mound of cauldron cakes. Remus showed up in time to help them eat their way through the peach cobbler, which was excellent.
"I haven't been to see the elves in a while," Remus said after eating his share of the cobbler. "Maybe I'll pop in to see them before dinner tonight. Want to come, Kat?"
James gave a large belch and said, "Woah, woah Moony! I have a diabolical plan here that involves Kat getting me some proper recon and as a reward, I'm taking her to meet the house elves!"
Remus gave a snort which he quickly turned into a cough. "Did he ask you to ask Lily some personal question just in time for Valentine's Day, Kat?" She nodded since her mouth was still full of cobbler. Her knarl drawing lay forgotten on top of her textbooks under the table. "Well, I guess since he already went through me, Peter, and Sirius, he had to ask someone else to do it for him this year."
"What d'you mean?" Kat asked, swallowing the last of the peach cobbler.
"Every year since our second year, James has tried asking Lily out on Valentine's Day. Mind you, he asks her out at every available moment through the year, but always makes a special effort on Valentine's Day. It's like he thinks there's something 'magical' about Valentine's Day, and girls will fall in love with a bloke just because he asked her out."
"Hey, I'm right here!" Said James, waving his hands in the air to make a point. Remus ignored him.
"Anyway, last year he asked Peter to get her favorite color, the year before Sirius had to figure out her favorite type of cookie, and the year before that I had to figure out what her favorite candy was. So we all know that she likes purple, snicker doodle cookies (which James asked the house elves to bake for him), and peppermint toads and Fizzing Whizbees. I guess all that's left to figure out so James can put together the most impressive Valentine's Day display is what her favorite flower is."
Kat felt her face split into a wide grin. "Imagine being accosted with a bouquet of flowers, cookies, candy, and your favorite color all at once. What girl in her right mind could refuse?"
"Oh, are we talking about James and Evans again?" Sirius had just appeared through the portrait hole and was stuffing something red into his bag. He saw Kat looking and hastily stuffed it deeper into his bag. "Hey Mr. Snowy! Who's he recruited this time?" Kat raised her hand and Sirius gave Mr. Snowy a scratch behind the ears. "What do you have to figure out?"
"Her favorite flower."
"Seriously, mate?" James shrugged.
"Got anyone on your mind for Valentine's Day then, Sirius?" James asked innocently, ignoring the amused looks his friends were giving him.
Sirius gave a big shrug. "Not really. What about you, Moony?"
"Of course not," Remus said bitterly. "What girl in her right mind would—"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous. You're fantastic! You're smart, nice, have a really weird sense of humor, honestly not that bad lo—" Kat stopped this tangent when she saw the boys staring at her. Remus' mouth was slightly open and James was grinning. Sirius looked irritated. "Wait, a minute! You all never showed me that other secret thing you've been keeping from me!" She said, changing the subject before things got awkward. She liked Remus very much and didn't like to see him so bitter, but she also didn't want him getting the wrong idea. She started stroking Mr. Snowy.
Her statement worked. Immediately, the boys all showed identical grins. "It's something we've been working on for ages," said Sirius, looking much happier now that the conversation was being steered in the opposite direction.
"It's a pretty amazing piece of magic," said Remus. "I've never heard of anyone this young who's been able to do it."
"Will you stop yapping and show me?"
"We can't do it here. C'mon." James jumped up from the table and grabbed Kat's hand, leading her up the stairs toward the boys' dormitory.
"Hold on, lemme put Mr. Snowy away!" Kat wiggled out of his grip and sprinted up to her dormitory to put the rabbit back in his cage. "I'll be back again soon!" She cooed before racing down her staircase and up the boys'.
Their dormitory was exactly like hers, except it was about twenty times messier. Khristine and Lily like to keep things neat and orderly, but the only part of this dormitory that was neat was a single bed on the far side of the room that Kat guessed was Remus' and he'd only made his bed. Dirty clothes were thrown willy-nilly about the circular room and the bed sheets were thrown everywhere. Feathers, the remnants of a pillow fight, littered the floor and spare pieces of parchment were scattered underfoot.
"Er, welcome to our humble abode!" James said unceremoniously. "Windgardium leviosa!" The beds, trunks, and dressers all floated weightlessly in the air. James gave a little flick and they all piled themselves neatly against the wall, leaving a large, empty space for the four of them to stand in. "We need a bit of room for me."
"What d'you mean?"
"You'll see!"
"Kat, come stand over here by me," Remus said. He was standing in front of the pile of furniture. Kat obediently went to stand next to him and stood facing Sirius and James, positively trembling with curiosity.
"I'll go first, shall I?" Sirius said. He screwed his face up in concentration, and suddenly there was black fur growing out of his skin. He was shrinking in height and his face was elongating and his fingers were curling in, and then suddenly, where Sirius had been standing a moment before, was a giant black, bearlike dog.
Kat stared wide eyed at the huge dog and then said, "Oh my God, you're an Animagus!" Sirius gave a loud bark and bounded over to where she was standing, dumbstruck. As a dog, Sirius reached in height to about her waist (grant it, she wasn't that tall, but still). He allowed her to pat him on the head and scratch him behind the ears before turning back into a human.
"Merlin, Sirius! That's amazing! You're a dog?" Kat said.
"I figured it fit. My name is Sirius…and you know it's the dog star…so I guess it makes sense that I turn into a dog."
"This is amazing." Kat gave Sirius a hard poke in the side, to ensure that he was really standing there and wasn't going to turn back into an animal.
"Hey, I haven't done my thing yet!" James said and he too screwed his face up in concentration. Unlike Sirius, James began to grow taller and his arms and legs longer. He bent over at the waist and huge branchlike things began to sprout out of his head. Finally, a beautiful, magnificent stag stood in the middle of the Fifth Year boys' dormitory. The tips of his antlers just brushed the ceiling and one of his legs looked like it was as tall as Kat.
"Wow," she breathed softly. "You guys are absolutely amazing."
The stag pawed the floor and his hoof made a loud clicking noise that made them all flinch. His nickname "Prongs" made a lot more sense now. The stag began to shrink, and once more James Potter was standing in the middle of the floor. He grinned cheekily at the look on Kat's face.
"What made you decide to do this?" She asked, giving James a hard poke in the side too.
"Remus did," answered Sirius simply.
"Werewolves are only a danger to humans, not animals," Remus explained while simultaneously returning the furniture to its proper location. "Since James and Sirius can transform into such big creatures, they help keep me in check."
"Can…can Peter do this to?" Kat asked quietly, quite sure she knew the answer already.
"Yes, actually," James chuckled at the surprised look on her face. "It's good Petey turns into something so small, or we'd have issues getting to the Whomping Willow."
"Why do you need to get to the Whomping Willow?" Kat asked, completely lost.
"Every month at the full moon, I go to the Shrieking Shack to transform. There's a passage between the school and the Shack, and the Whomping Willow is planted right over the entrance so no one can come across me when I'm transformed. There's a knot on the tree that you have to press to make it safe to get to the passage. Pete transforms into a rat to hit that knot so the rest of us can get through," explained Remus.
"And what do you do when you're all animals?"
"We explore," was all Sirius said.
It took a while for it all to sink in, but then Kat couldn't stop grinning. Her friends, her fantastic friends, could turn into animals at will to help Remus through his transformation. Magic like this was way beyond their year, and James, Sirius, and Peter had all managed to do it. She was beyond impressed.
On Thursday, Kat finally remembered that she was supposed to ask Lily about her favorite type of flower, so she cornered her after their Herbology lesson.
"Hey, Lily! Can I talk to you for a sec?"
Lily looked up from searching her bag for something and smiled, dazzling Kat slightly with how pretty she was. It was just recently that Lily was really beginning to shine, and Kat couldn't help but feel a little jealous. She was still short, skinny and brunette, with boring green eyes, but Lily was tall, curvy, had beautiful auburn hair that hung down her back and the most wonderful green eyes Kat had ever seen. Lily smiled at her and said, "Sure!"
"This might seem kind of random," Kat began as they navigated one of the vegetable patches behind Greenhouse two on their way up to the school for dinner, "but what's your favorite type of flower?"
"Tulips," Lily answered automatically. But before Kat could say anything else, Lily stopped walking and fixed her with a calculating stare. "Potter put you up to this, didn't he?" She said without preamble.
"Um—"
"That arrogant little git! He can't even ask me what my favorite flower is, or what my favorite color is, by himself? He has to get his minions to do it for him I guess."
"Hey, I'm not one of James' minions!" Kat said hotly.
"Yeah, but you're still doing what he says. He thinks he's so fantastic, with his good grades and Quidditch. But he's really just an—" Lily ranted on this way for a while and Kat could tell that she had gone on autopilot with her rant. Lily had begun walking faster and faster up to the castle and Kat nonchalantly started slowing down, she wasn't even sure if Lily noticed. By the time Lily reached the castle doors, Kat was still far out on the lawn and thinking that James was seriously deluded if he ever thought Lily Evans would agree to go out with him.
Kat let James know at dinner that Lily's favorite flowers were in fact tulips, and not lilies which was something that the whole table found interesting.
"I wouldn't advise you to ask her, though!" Kat warned. Peter, Sirius, and Remus all snorted. Apparently, they had had this discussion before. James, however, was not listening and was busy wracking his brain for a spell that would give him tulips.
The next morning, the whole school was extra loud and buzzing with the excitement of Valentine's Day. By break, new couples were already walking through the halls hand in hand and by the afternoon, it seemed like nearly the whole school had dates for the Hogsmead trip the next day, and still James hadn't asked Lily.
At dinner, James seemed really quiet and didn't listen to any of the boys' teasing. Sirius, like always had received about a million Valentine's from various girls across the school, but had ignored them all and dumped the ones that didn't have candy into the nearest rubbish bin he could find. The ones that did have candy he kept and they feasted on them throughout the day.
Halfway through dessert, James stood up abruptly and left the hall. Thinking it would be best if she followed him just to make sure he didn't do anything stupid or dangerous, Kat stood up to leave the table too. James wasn't in the Entrance Hall, which was lucky because Peeves was stringing together a daisy chain from rotting flowers (Kat suspected he would be draping them on people when he was finished). She started making her way up to Gryffendor Tower and after taking a shortcut behind a tapestry she was in the corridor leading up to the tower.
Only, the corridor was completely different. From every available crevice, purple ribbons hung from the ceiling and draped the walls. Tulips in every color were positioned in vases balanced on top of platters of cookies and boxes of peppermint toads and Fizzing Whizbees.
"James?" Kat called timidly, not really believing what she saw. James popped up from behind one of the stacks of cookies and candy and frowned at her.
"What are you doing here? Evans should be coming up soon!"
"James, do you honestly think this is a good idea? Ambushing someone like this after dinner…?" James wasn't listening. He was making slight adjustments to his display. He stopped when he heard the sound of benches being pushed backward all at once, announcing the end of the feast.
"Hide! She'll be here soon!" Not knowing what else to do, Kat ducked behind a suit of armor and tried not to think about what Lily would do to James. Right on cue, Lily, along with her entourage of Eileen, Khristine, and Arabella, came around the corner and stopped dead when she saw the decorations. She colored just as James leapt from behind the largest stack of sweets.
"Come on, Evans! If you go out with me this time, you can have all of this stuff! Even the tulips!" Kat could have slapped him. Lily looked like she really wanted to slap him. Instead, she went on another rant, yelling at James, in front of a crowd that was growing larger as more people finished dinner, about how pig headed and arrogant he was. And Lily Evans, who was best in the year in Charms (after Kat now), took out her wand, gave it a little wave, and there was a puff of smoke where James had just been standing. When it cleared, the crowd of students howled with laughter—Lily had turned James into a duck.
Kat clapped a hand to her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud and ran out into the corridor and picked duck-James up. Lily gave a loud sniff and vanished the purple decorations and the sweets and stomped off into the Gryffendor common room. Kat, meanwhile raced down the corridor, still trying not to laugh, and slipped into the passage behind a tapestry…and found herself face to face with Sirius.
Their noses were literally almost touching, they were so close. Sirius looked momentarily surprised by Kat's sudden appearance, but he quickly recovered. They were so close, Kat could tell what the precise shade of gray Sirius' eyes were. She gave a little squeak and jumped back, turning at the same time and somehow managed to crack her head against the wall.
"Woah, hey, you okay?" Sirius asked. He stretched his arm out and gently touched the back of her head where she had hit it. He took a step closer.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Kat mumbled and flushed. She was still holding duck-James in her hands.
"Is that a duck?" Sirius asked quietly. Kat nodded. "You're so weird," he said, taking a half step closer and still holding her head. He had to crane his neck a little to actually see her, he was so much taller than her. He bent closer and got a strange look in his eye. Kat stopped breathing and froze. She could feel herself turning scarlet as Sirius pulled her closer, his other hand on her back now. The duck-James was all but forgotten as Kat's heart starting racing faster and Sirius bent down, his mouth getting closer, his eyes closing. Kat was just about to let him kiss her when there was a loud pop and a puff of smoke.
James materialized out of the smoke and Kat jumped back, cracking her head on the wall again. James blinked a few times and stretched, looking between Kat, who was blushing profusely and Sirius who was looking as though he would like to hit him.
"What are we doing in this passage?" James asked brightly. "Wait, don't answer. Did Lily say yes?"
"Of course not," Sirius said briskly. "She turned you into a duck."
"Oh," James said, dejectedly. "Well, I guess we'd better get to the dormitory before she turns me into something else." He left the passage and after a backwards glance, Sirius followed him.
Kat was left rubbing her head where she had cracked it twice with the feeling of Sirius' hand on her back still fresh in her mind. She hadn't really known until that moment that she felt anything at all besides friendship towards Sirius. In fact, until a few months ago, she was positive that he didn't even like her as a friend. And now he was trying to kiss her in hidden, secret passageways? She stayed leaning against the wall for a few more minutes to let her heart rate return to normal. Then, mastering herself, but with her mind still swirling and her heart still fluttering a little, she left the passage and entered the Gryffendor common room, determined to think about what had just happened tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!