Chapter 29 - Secrets and Lessons
"How does this even work?" Lily asked. She and James were standing in front of the large gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the headmaster's office on the third floor.
She was still reeling a little after hearing Remus recite the conversation he'd overheard the night before, and the time it had taken for them for walk down from the dormitory hadn't been enough for Lily to fully process what she'd heard. The others had needed to go off to their lessons, but with a free period and the shiny new head boy and girl badges adoring their robes, Lily had decided that it was the responsibility of herself and James to find out what Dumbledore had meant when he'd talked about a war. The conversation they were about to have seemed much more daunting now that they were here, but neither of them wanted to turn back without any answers.
"I think it needs a password or something," she said after a moment of glancing over the quite smooth and obviously handle-free gargoyle. "It's not like we can knock."
James turned his head a fraction towards her, a small smile tugging at the edge of his lips despite the serious expression he'd been wearing for most of the morning.
"Pixie puffs," James said confidently to the ugly gargoyle, which obliged immediately and creaked open to reveal a large circular staircase that wound upwards like a snake.
"Of course," Lily said, shaking her head as James shrugged and stepped through the newly revealed opening. "I'm not even going to ask how you know that."
"Bit of a punt actually," James shrugged, "he hasn't changed it from last year yet."
"Well I'm sure he will now," Lily said, but she stepped onto the staircase behind him.
At the top of the stairs was a tall wooden door, and they exchanged a look before Lily knocked, first softly and then with more force.
"You may enter," said Dumbledore, and it was so quiet there, so detached from the bustle of students heading to their classes, that they heard him clearly despite him not raising his voice.
As they stepped inside, the stone staircase made a low grinding sound as the gargoyle slid back into place.
"Ah, Miss Evans, Mr Potter, do come in." Dumbledore was seated at a large desk scattered with books, rolls of parchment and various instruments, some recognisable like a small brass telescope and others much more unusual. It was a cluttered office, the walls packed with bookshelves or portraits of witches and wizards and the rest of the space occupied by lots of small tables and cabinets. James had been in here only twice before, and neither time had given him long enough to examine everything of interest. Most fascinating of all was Fawkes, with its flame-red feathers and watchful eyes, who watched them from its perch beside the headmaster's desk.
With a flick of Dumbledore's wand, a pair of seats appeared on the opposite side of his desk, and he gestured for the two of them to sit down.
"I was hoping to get the chance to congratulate you both on being made head boy and girl. I have absolute faith in you, and I should hope you'll be keeping your usual troublemaking to a minimum this year." He smiled as he looked at them over his glasses.
"Of course, Professor," James said, "we wouldn't dream of causing any sort of trouble."
"Yes, indeed. But I can see that is not what you came here to speak to me about. Something is bothering you, is it not?"
Lily fidgeted in her seat, and Dumbledore leant forward expectantly. "Please, tell me what's on your mind."
"It's just..." she started, feeling suddenly foolish under the gaze of the headmaster. She wasn't entirely sure how he'd react to their questions about something they obviously didn't know enough about. But she ploughed on anyway, her curiosity and fear mixing together to make her sound much more confident than she felt when she said, "We hear you think there's going to be a war, and as head boy and girl we think we have the right to know what's going on."
James nodded beside her.
"I see," Dumbledore said, considering them. To their relief, he didn't ask how they knew such a thing. He didn't look angry, or all that surprised really, just contemplative as he looked at them over his half moon glasses. "Professor McGonagall is of the opinion that the students should be left out of such matters."
"With respect sir," Lily stated, cutting off James, who was also about to argue. "We're of age, and since I'm muggle born I'd really like to know if someone is going to try and kill me."
Dumbledore looked at her thoughtfully. He remained silent for a long moment, until James felt compelled to add, "After what happened to Mary, we ought to be prepared if something like that is going to happen again. The students are our responsibility and if they're going to be in danger" - he glanced at Lily - "we need to know about it. We need to protect them."
"The attack on Miss MacDonald was a terrible thing," Dumbledore said slowly, "but as long as I am headmaster I can assure you that incidents such as that will not become a regular occurrence. I admire your courage, both of you, but the danger does not lie here. Hogwarts is as safe as can be."
"But not everywhere is safe?" Lily pressed, and Dumbledore let out a long sigh.
"No, I'm afraid not. It seems that there are some people who are so set in their hatred of those they don't see as having 'pure' magical blood that they would choose to do terrible things in their quest for power. Hatred can be a powerful weapon. We can only hope to the worst of it from poisoning the minds of our younger students - perhaps you can concern yourselves with that for the time being. I won't tell you a war isn't a possibility, but we can all try to prevent it."
"Like the sorting hat said," Lily recalled, and Dumbledore nodded once more.
"Who's 'we'?" James asked, aware that he was perhaps pushing more than he ought to. "There must be other people trying to stop this war from happening, right?"
"There are always people willing to fight to stop the cruel and misguided from gaining power."
"But who-"
"For now, that is all you need to know," Dumbledore said, his voice firm. "Now you had best be off. Your free period will be ending soon and I wouldn't want to keep you from your first class of the year."
They both hesitated, but after a moment Lily stood up and James followed suit.
"Thank you, Professor," Lily said.
Dumbledore inclined his head in acknowledgement.
"Try not to let this distract you," he said as they reached the door. "The time may come when you need to worry about the possibility of war, but for now that is not your concern. Enjoy what time you have left at Hogwarts; focus on your studies and especially your friends, because you will need them if the worst comes to pass."
The first week of term had been so busy that James wasn't entirely sure where his free time had gone. All of his teachers seemed to have given him more homework than it was humanly possible to complete, being a responsible Head Boy was tougher than he'd expected, and he'd had to squeeze in time for quidditch trials to find a new beater and keeper now that Marlene and Kingsley had left school.
The last thing he needed was more work to do, but McGonagall had informed him and Lily the day before that seventh year prefects were required to tutor fifth years to prepare them for their OWLs. This seemed extremely unfair given that he hadn't actually signed up for all this responsibility, but he cheered up when he found out that they didn't need to patrol the corridors at night like younger prefects did.
They were doing the tutoring in an unused classroom on the third floor, which James managed to walk past twice before he found it. Lily had gone to see Professor Flitwick about the charms homework so she hadn't arrived yet, and Remus had rushed off back to the common room for something, so James found himself in a room full of fifteen year olds and a few seventh year prefects he didn't know very well. They barely even looked up when he entered the room, and even when he stood behind the desk and cleared his throat they paid him very little attention; they were too busy throwing around a fanged Frisbee, which by the looks of it had already been the cause of a dent in the wall and a stack of parchment scattered over the floor.
The only one who seemed to be completely uninterested in the game was Snape, who was standing at the back of the room, leaning against a bookshelf. When James accidentally caught his eye he raised a mocking eyebrow at James' lack of control and smirked.
"James," Chloe, the Gryffindor seeker, called as she jumped on her chair to retrieve the Frisbee from on top of a cupboard, "catch!"
He grabbed in automatically - chaser reflexes - and when a Slytherin girl said "pass it here!" he obligingly threw it over to her.
Lily met Remus half way to the third floor classroom, both of them looking tired after a full day of classes and their book bags leaving uncomfortable lines on their shoulders.
"Please don't make me teach them runes," Remus said before Lily even had a chance to say hello. "It is hell and if I have to look at another rune ever again I may just punch someone."
"I'll give you something decent," Lily smiled, looping her arm through his as they walked. "Transfiguration do you think? Or maybe James will want that, so perhaps defence."
They reached the classroom quickly and from the racket inside it immediately became clear that they were the last to arrive. Pushing the door open curiously, Lily and Remus were met by a fifth year jumping wildly off a desk in front of the door, reaching for something in the air which they clearly missed, if the crashing and sound of 'awwww's were anything to go by.
"Hard luck Ashby," James said from across the room, completely oblivious to Lily's presence. "Call yourself a seeker! Looks like we're going to have an easy time against Hufflepuff this year." He laughed, and it wasn't until Lily has taken out her wand and frozen the frisbee mid-air that anyone noticed she was there at all.
The fifth years immediately climbed down from where many of them were perched on the tables, and the 7th year prefects at least had the decency to look at her apologetically.
"James," she said with a dangerous smile. "I see you've been imparting upon the 5th years the importance of not getting caught with banned items."
"Er," James replied, and a few people sniggered behind their hands. "Yeah?" He said sheepishly, turning to thee 5th years. "I was going to confiscate it right after the game was finished."
"Mmm-hmm," Lily replied, joining James behind the teacher's desk while the prefects shuffled to the front beside them. "Now," she said, addressing the 5th years. "We're all here to assign one of the seventh years to the subjects you need to be tutored in. From then on it will be each prefect's responsibility to let their study-group know which day of the week they'll be meeting and where. Remember, if your teacher has suggested you take these extra sessions, it's really important to turn up - we've all been in your position before and can answer a lot of the questions you might have about spells, or try to simplify what might seem like complicated theories."
She dug around in her pocket for the list of subjects they had to assign themselves and the other 7th years to, and handed it to James, looking at him expectantly.
"Right, okay," he said, "seventh years come here and we'll sort this out."
After ten minutes of squabbling over subjects, during which time the fifth years grew bored and one of them used a summoning spell to retrieve the frisbee from Lily - which was an impressive bit of magic that James got told off for complimenting - they finally managed to sort out who was tutoring what.
James had ended up with transfiguration, Remus with defence against the dark arts, and Lily with charms. Since lots of the students needed to be tutored in more than subject, there wasn't much point splitting up and starting right away, so instead they simply took turns sorting out a weekly slot for each subject. James arranged for his group to meet on Wednesdays before quidditch practice, and with that out the way he left the others to it and was relieved to get out of the overcrowded classroom.
Chloe only needed tutoring in transfiguration, so she left just after James and soon caught up with him on the way up to the Gryffindor tower.
"Hey, wait up!" She said, bounding up to him on the first floor staircase. "That was a right hassle, eh?"
"A bit," James agreed. "Should help you all out though."
"Yeah, yeah, Mr. Head Boy," she laughed, "weird that, I suppose you're not used to it either." As she often did, Chloe didn't give him time to respond to just how strange it was before ploughing on and asking, "so how was your summer? You and Evans seem like an old married couple already."
"It was good," James laughed, tugging her to one side as they approached the fourth floor and gesturing to a shortcut behind a painting. "Me and Lily definitely got closer."
"Oh realllly," she grinned, drawing out the word and wiggling her eyebrows at James under the candle-light of the thin, deserted passageway they'd entered.
"Aren't you too young for close sort of thoughts," James chastised jokingly. "I didn't mean it that way, but how about you and Benjy? You seemed to really hit it off last year."
"He's awesome," Chloe agreed, getting a dreamy look in her eye that James really hoped he didn't mirror when he talked about Lily. "Turns out we live pretty close to each other so he came over a lot in summer - even our parents met and mine we're blown away with loads of cool magic that his mum showed them. It's weird that even though I'm a witch they hadn't really seen any before since I can't practice at home. They're muggles, obviously. But yeah, it's going super well. Benjy's really fun and he has a little sister who's adorable. And, just between the two of us, he's not too bad in the sack."
"What!?" James spluttered as Chloe dashed ahead of him with a wicked grin on her face, pushing through the back of a painting and out onto the 7th floor corridor. "Chloe!"
"Keep calm grandpa," she said as James stepped out after her, "I'm only messing with you." She winked for good measure
James shook his head, trying not to be offended at being called "grandpa" - though in all honesty he did feel a lot older than Chloe. He never would have thought two years could make such a difference, but he had changed a lot since he was 15. And with his new Head Boy status, he felt like he was responsible for the younger students - Chloe especially. She'd always been a whirlwind, loud and full of energy even when she was only a first year, but he'd barely known her until she joined the quidditch team a year ago. Since then, she'd continued to impress and surprise him, finding fun in everything even when nobody else could. It was cheesy to even think it, but he did look at her like a younger cousin, or even sibling.
With what Dumbledore had said earlier in the week about the coming danger, James could only hope that he was right about Hogwarts being the safest place to be.
