AN:- I'm not quite sure if it'll be one chapter, two chapters, or one and half chapters from now, but the end is very nearly upon us. Which also means that the entire reason I started writing this fic is nearly upon us. Some people have ideas and write a thousand word short story, I chose to write a 70-80,000 word novel in half a year, just to showcase the one idea I started with.
This story has kind of grown beyond that little fledgling now.
Chapter Twenty One: Summer
Exams were not fun.
As she staggered out of what felt like the hardest two hours of her life, Lisa had come to the staggering conclusion that she didn't like exams very much. Transfiguration was one of her favourite subjects, the complexity appealing to her exacting nature, but the exam had been hard, even for her. McGonagall had left nothing out, and she had been forced to try and remember every tiny piece of information she had obtained through the year.
She had to face it, if it hadn't been for Sally and Lily she wouldn't have passed it. The three of them together made a formidable revising team, and thanks to Lily she thought she even had a good chance of passing Charms with flying colours.
As she made her way back to the dorm she saw Quirrel and Harry Potter walking past each other just ahead of her, and as the two passed Harry gave Quirrel the weirdest sort of grimace she had ever seen. Another person might have tentatively called it a smile, but her first instinct was to wonder if Potter was suffering from stomach pains. When he passed her he rubbed his forehead briefly, which confirmed her suspicions. Something wasn't quite right with that Potter boy, and ever since he and his friends had knocked Gryffindor out of the running the whole school had been taking it upon themselves to talk about what had possessed them to go running around so late at night.
As if I can talk, She thought wryly as she approached the Ravenclaw knocker.
"What is worth fighting for?"
That's weird. She had heard from some of the prefects that the knocker could be blunt from time to time, but she hadn't expected something like that. She thought for a minute and then smiled, "Friendship, because it makes life worth living."
The door swung silently open and she stepped through, shivering a little at the amount of weird things that had been happening over the past few months. Her next exam was Charms the next morning, and she wanted to read through her notes again. She ran into Padma first though, curled up in front of the fireplace with a Potions textbook. The girl looked up as she walked by and waved her over.
"Hi Padma," Lisa slid into the chair next to her and curled her legs up underneath herself, "What's up?"
"Potions is up," Padma tapped the book she was holding; "I am completely lost with Forgetfulness Potions."
"I think there might be a joke somewhere in there," Lisa said, leaning forwards to try and read the page upside down, "Where are you stuck?"
"Once you've added the eye of toad, it says that you need dragonfly wings and salt water added together, but wouldn't that make everything explode?" Padma gave a little half smile, "Am I just reading that wrong?"
"No," Lisa pointed to an instruction three points down, "You missed the part about adding the wormwood essence. It cancels out the dragonfly's explosive properties, and the toad eye and salt water work together."
"Thanks," Padma went back to the book, looking relieved, "I must have read this thing four or five times, and I missed it every time."
"I know what you mean," Lisa leaned back and rubbed the bridge of her nose, "In the Transfiguration exam today I was about to say that the correct way to perform a switching spell was with a circle sweep and an upward wrist flick. I must have done that spell a hundred times in preparation, and I still nearly got it wrong."
"These exams are ruining my brain," Padma muttered into her book.
"Mine too," Lisa pushed herself up, "I'm going to go get my Charms book, don't go anywhere."
"Like I've got anything better to do right now," Was the only response.
Lisa ran up to her dorm, chuckling at her year mate's lack of enthusiasm, and pulled her Charms book off her bedside table. As she did so a piece of parchment fell out of it, and as she watched it flutter to the floor words started to appear on it. She picked it up and saw Lily's untidy scrawl on one side and Sally's surprisingly ordered hand on the other.
Cheer up! Said Sally's side, There's no point being grumpy about things you can't do anything about.
Lily's side was a little more helpful. If you've finally picked up this book, it must mean that the Charms exam is tomorrow. Which also means there's only two more days to go. See you in the Library after dinner.
Now laughing out loud, Lisa went back down to the common room.
"I got your note."
Lily looked up and smiled innocently, "Really? What note?"
"I was wondering what the charm that you used was? I didn't think we'd done invisibility charms that worked for that long."
"Page two hundred and twenty seven," Lily said, tapping her finger on that exact page, which she had conveniently left open, "It's a charm that lasts as long as the words are pressed against something. When you let the parchment drop out of the book, the words came back."
"Well thank you anyway," Lisa slid into her seat and opened her revision notebook, "And I totally did open that book before today."
"Did you do it in the last three days?" Lily's smile was turning into a smirk, "We put it in at the weekend, I figured you wouldn't touch the book until today."
"Alright you got me, I haven't even thought about Charms for the last few days." She took out her wand and started practicing swishing movements, "How did Transfiguration go?"
"Oh, you know," Lily waved her hand dismissively, "I think I might have mixed up a few of the incantations but nothing too bad."
"McGonagall's supposed to be a really hard marker," Lisa said, "But I'm sure you'll do fine," She added when she saw Lily's horrified look. "Uh, how do you do this again?"
"That's wingardium leviosa," Lily said dryly, not impressed by Lisa's attempts to change the subject, "We learned it back in October."
"Sorry," Lisa smiled nervously and flipped further into the book, "I know that some people don't like exams as much as me."
"Wow, you learn new stuff about your friends every day," Lily spun her Potions notes round to show to Daphne, "Help?"
Smiling nervously, Daphne started to point out where she had gone wrong. Lily couldn't help but smiling as well. When the year had started Daphne had never smiled, and here she was with people who she liked, smiling and helping them with their revision. At least she had done one thing right in the year, even if the rest of her year hated her.
The Charms exam went about as well as Lily could have hoped for. She knew she had all the questions right and thought she might even have been able to score a little extra credit with her extra knowledge. Between Charms and Herbology she thought she might just be able to pass the year with reasonable grades. Her Potions exam had been a disaster, and she had no idea about Defence Against the Dark Arts. Maybe if Quirrel had been a halfway competent teacher then she would have felt more confident about it, but it sometimes felt almost like she and the others had been teaching themselves for the whole year when it came to Defence.
Astronomy, thankfully, didn't take place on top of the tower in the middle of the night. Instead they were all crowded into a rather dank and disused feeling classroom on the first floor and sat in rows while they scribbled away. Lily thought she had done reasonably well on that one, and History of Magic had actually been alright without the stuffy classroom and droning voice of Professor Binns putting her to sleep. If only she had actually learned something while she was in the lessons she might have done better in exam.
All in all, when they finally finished, and the three of them were sitting out by the lake watching one of the Gryffindors playing with the giant squid, they were more than a little relieved to finally have the chance to rest.
"I never even want to see another numbered question as long as I live," Sally moaned into her arms, which were crossed over her head to keep the light out.
"Well you might have some problems when you come back next year," Lisa actually had a book out, and was sitting up instead of sprawling, her shirt tucked in and her tie done up.
Lily rolled happily in the grass, knowing she looked like a giant cat, and that she was getting grass stains all over her robes. She didn't care though, it just felt so good to be out by the lake with the sun on her skin and a cool breeze washing over her. "I don't even care if I fail everything," She said, "This is just so much fun, and this whole last year has been so much fun, and right now I couldn't even think about moving."
At that second three figures rushed past them from further round the lake, heading towards Hagrid's hut. Lisa looked up curiously, "Where are they going?"
Lily looked over as well, seeing the red hair and mane of bushy brown that signified Harry Potter and his friends were going somewhere. "Every time I see them they're running somewhere," She said, resting her chin on her hands and watching as they stopped right in front of Hagrid, "I wonder what's so important?"
"Probably the same thing that lost them all those points and meant they were out when the troll was running around."
"They were out when the troll was running around?" Sally asked.
"Didn't you hear?"
"Just gossip."
"No, they were out, and actually earned points for it as well."
"No fair," Sally said, going back to her lying, "We were out that night as well."
"Yes, but we were cowering on the third floor, not fighting it in the downstairs girl's bathroom."
"Well that'd be why then."
"Probably."
The three Gryffindors were racing back up towards the school, still sprinting at top speed with their cloaks flying behind them. "See," Lily said, rolling back over to stare at the sky, "Always running."
"Well I'm sure it's something very important, will lose them a lot of points and make sure that Ravenclaw are going to win the House Cup."
"That's if Slytherin don't beat you to it."
"You're going down Moon, you and your little house." Lisa thought she could pull off a pretty decent Wicked Witch, but Lily just stared at her blankly.
"Why do you sound like an old woman?"
"Okay, you are coming over to my house during the holidays and we are watching some movies."
"That sounds like fun," Lily watched a cloud in the shape of a mouse scuttle across the sky, "Would it require moving from this spot?"
"Eventually yes."
"Are you even reading that book?"
"Not really," Lisa flipped it round and Lily saw what looked like a pamphlet inside, with bright pictures and big white balloons filled with words.
"What is that?"
"It's a comic," Lisa shuffled further down the grass so the other two could look at it, "Muggles read them, mostly muggle children."
"What age of muggle children?" Lily snatched the thing out of her friend's hands, "Because judging by the dialogue it's somewhere around the four to five bracket."
"Shut up you," Lisa grabbed for it but Sally got there first, rolling a good few feet away and starting to read.
"I remember this," She said happily, kicking her legs behind her, "I remember reading it when I was younger. My mum said it was the only way to get me to read anything."
Lisa managed to grab it back, "Yeah, well, I don't want to read anything too taxing right now, and this was just stuffed into the bottom of my trunk, so I thought why not."
"We're just joking," Lily said, rolling onto her front and looking towards the castle to see Harry and his friends coming back out of the castle. "I wonder what they're up to, they always look so serious."
"Probably nothing," Lisa was back to her comic, completely ignoring the others, "I bet other people look at us and think we're really serious, but we're just planning to break out and play with the brooms."
"Speaking of…" Lily rolled back to look at her friends, "You want to do something tonight?"
"Tonight?" Lisa raised an eyebrow at her, "We haven't done any planning though, how are we going to get out?"
"Can you two get to the seventh floor?" Lily had worked this over in her head during the last five minutes of the history exam, "Because I can think of one very good way down."
"The slide?" That got Sally's attention, "We're going to use the slide, and then go flying?" Her eyes were sparkling like they hadn't in a long time, almost like that first day on the train, "That is the best way ever to end the year."
"But what if we get caught on the way up to seventh floor? And how are we going to get back in? And…" She trailed off and stared at the lake as the giant squid pulled itself back under the water.
"Oh," Lily avoided looking at her friend, choosing instead to focus on Harry and his friends as they went back inside, still looking very serious. She realised suddenly that Lisa hadn't been back to the seventh floor since she had seen… whatever it was the window had shown her. Going back there after dark would not be something her friend wanted to do. "Well we don't have to."
"No, it's fine," Lisa's smile was more a grimace, "It's a good idea. Tonight, after lights out, we'll meet at the portrait."
"Okay." Lily sat up, "Hey, I just realised something."
"What?" Sally seemed to be nearly comatose from relaxation, but she still rolled her head in Lily's direction.
"We made it."
"Made what?"
"The results come out by the end of the week, and then we go home. Like, for the summer holidays."
"Yes," Lisa said slowly, "That's usually what happens at the end of the school year."
"But that's just it; we made it through our first year at Hogwarts!" The others stared at her like she'd gone crazy, "Come on guys, we had our moments this year didn't we? Like with Pansy and the troll and the occasional sneaking out, but we made it! And I just," She shrugged, suddenly feeling a bit embarrassed as they kept staring at her, "I thought it was something to be proud of."
Sally was nodding, "You're right, and hey, broomstick flying is kind of a good celebration isn't it? I mean, that was what we did the first time we ever snuck out wasn't it?"
"Absolutely," Lily said, nudging closer to Lisa as Sally did the same on the other side. The two of them put their arms around their friend, "It's been a great year girls."
Lisa finally smiled again, "You got that right."
AN:- The Sorting Hat responds to threats against the school, why shouldn't things like the Ravenclaw knocker? Part of the fun in writing a story like this, after all the books have been released, is knowing what happens next, and being able to work it into the narrative. Things like the window, the knocker, various other scenes I'm not going to spoil now. They are all setting things up for later, and I know that they can happen, because they happen in the original story.
I liked the little note Lily and Sally sent Lisa. It just popped into my head when I wanted a cute way to end that scene and start another one, and since I had earlier mentioned that they learned how to make text disappear in Charms, somewhere back in the 8-14 chapters. Obviously my subconscious was planting Chekhov's Guns long before my conscious mind knew about it. It's what I love about writing without a plan, is that when you've planned everything in the last detail there are no surprises, whereas I can suddenly realise that something I wrote earlier is the perfect thing to bring back for a quick joke or a more dramatic plot point.
We never actually hear about how good a teacher Quirrel was. It gets mentioned in Book Five when Umbridge says he was the last good teacher they had, and Harry says 'he was alright apart from having Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head.' It's not made clear if he really was a good teacher, and I thought a possibly implication from the scene is that because Umbridge thinks he was good, he obviously isn't.
Some nice references to the book (for me, I thought) Lee Jordan is playing with the giant squid, and of course Harry and friends are rushing around being serious, but no one has any idea about what the heck they're doing.
According to my mum I was actually behind the required reading age for my year group until she bought me a Beano comic when I was about four or five, and then suddenly I shot ahead, and now look at me, writing novels and everything. I still get a Beano annual every year, just to remind myself to keep the inner child alive.
Hey, I just realised something. I made it! I wrote a book in six months! Woah. Read and review on this most auspicious day.