"Why are we learning wandless magic again?" Peter asked as the four Marauders gathered in Sirius' den. He already knew, but he and Sirius had been asking the question every four or five minutes just to mess with James.
"Because Harry has demonstrated some amazing wandless talent and has been teaching his sisters," James explained with an annoyed sigh. "Lily said that if we can make it appear normal it'll encourage all the children to learn."
"Makes sense," Peter said. "You really think we can learn wandless magic?"
"We don't need to learn every spell, just enough to seem competent," James said as he set a candle on the coffee table.
"Pretty much like school then," Sirius joked.
Peter accepted a glass of whiskey from Sirius. "It's a lot like school, everything we want to learn is locked up somewhere we can't get to, so we have to figure it out ourselves."
"At least there was a little on it in the Black Library," Remus said.
James focused all his attention on the candle in front of him and after taking several deep breaths he snapped his fingers, causing a wisp of smoke to come from the wick.
Sirius laughed.
"This is bloody difficult!" James complained.
"Well, if it wasn't everybody would do it," Remus said reasonably as he poured himself a drink.
"Tell that to Harry," James said with a snort, "I've seen him casually use wandless magic to do any number of things."
Sirius put down his glass of whiskey. "I've always been good at fire, let me have a go."
"Harry is one smart kid, probably gets it from Lily," Remus teased.
"Yeah-hey!" James complained before flicking his fingers and hitting Remus with a wandless tickling charm.
Remus burst out laughing and fumbled for his wand to cancel the spell.
"Yes! I got one!" James yelled proudly.
"The tickling charm should be a lot more difficult than the candle lighting spell," Sirius said. "How'd you do it?"
"I was annoyed and amused… and it just worked," James replied. "I forgot I wasn't holding my wand."
"And it's a spell you know quite well," Remus added thoughtfully.
"I know the candle lighting spell quite well as well," James pointed out.
"Well, well, well," Sirius and Peter chorused with matching grins.
"True, so why could you cast one and not the other?" Remus asked, ignoring the pair.
"He tags me with it whenever I make a bad pun," Sirius said, "so he's probably cast it a lot more."
"Instead of trying for the simplest spells we should try for the ones we have cast the most," Peter offered.
"I think you're onto something there," Sirius said with a grin before he closed his eyes, concentrating, and then tagged Remus in the balls with a spell.
Remus froze and then cautiously pulled at the waistband of his trousers. "You shaved my balls?!"
Sirius grinned. "We use the shaving charm daily."
Remus let his waistband snap back. "Alright then, say goodbye to your eyebrows."
"No wands!" James ordered. "We're trying to learn wandless here."
"Point," Remus agreed, setting his wand aside. "Prepare for payback!"
0o0o0o0o0o
Harry noticed Neville and Ron speaking in hushed tones over a copy of the Daily Prophet in the corner of the room. "Guess they got their first clue about the stone." He wondered if Dumbledore had arranged for Hagrid to visit the bank with Neville to pick up the Philosopher's stone or if the prophecy has pushed events to happen.
He knew Death and Desire were pushing for certain things to happen, by asking him to do things for them, but how did Fate work?
"Excuse me," a dark haired girl said, breaking Harry from his thoughts. "Would you mind helping me with DADA?"
"I'd be glad to," Harry replied reflexively as he realized he was talking to Katie Bell, who was in the year above him.
"Good," she said relieved. "We've got Quirrell for a teacher this year and he's been no help at all."
Harry grinned. "Had our first class with him earlier today, I can understand where you're coming from. What spell are you having trouble with?"
"The disarming spell," Katie replied. "While I seem to have it down, it's really weak."
Harry pulled out his wand and she stared. "It's not bone," he assured her with a grin, knowing how everyone reacted to his wand.
Katie looked it over carefully. "Could have fooled me, did in fact."
Harry stepped back a couple of feet. "Okay, cast away."
A number of students stopped what they were doing to watch as the two squared off in front of the fireplace.
Katie's wand snapped forward. "Expelliarmus!"
Harry felt a slight tug on his wand. "Good form, clear pronunciation… I think you just don't have the motivation down."
"Motivation?" she asked. "But I do want the spell to work."
"Yes, but you have to want to disarm me, not just finish a class assignment," Harry explained. "Your main focus is to cast the spell, it's one step removed from the effect you want, robbing the spell of its power."
"So I have to want to disarm you more than I want to cast the spell?" Katie asked, just to be sure.
"Exactly," Harry said. "Let me make it easy for you."
"Rictumsempra," Harry cast making her giggle for a couple of seconds before she managed to cast finite on herself.
"What was that for?" she asked before realizing the answer. "Because I have to want to disarm you."
"I'm going to cast it again in three… two…" Harry started to count down.
"Expelliarmus!" she proclaimed loudly, her wand snapping forward.
Harry's wand shot from his hand and she had to fumble to catch it.
"I did it!" Katie exclaimed with a bright smile.
Harry retrieved his wand from her. "I'm surprised you're already working on the disarming charm, I thought that wasn't taught until further in."
"Quirrell is a waste so I'm studying ahead," Katie explained. "Thanks for the help."
"Any time," Harry replied before rounding up all the first years for lunch, as Katie went back to her friends and they quickly wrote down some notes before getting ready for lunch themselves.
0o0o0o0o0o
Dumbledore smiled as he watched the students file in for lunch. It was always nice to see eager young students filling the halls. He watched curiously as the four students who had been involved in speeding up this year's sorting gathered together at the end of the Gryffindor table and were discussing something.
Despite his best efforts, the houses tended to polarize students, making it difficult to encourage school unity so seeing students from all four houses gather together was rare.
"I wonder what they're discussing," Dumbledore mused aloud.
"They're discussing the best way to encourage their yearmates to do better in class and when Mr. Potter can tutor them to make sure they are far enough ahead so they can help tutor those in their house," Flitwick replied.
"That's remarkably responsible for first years," Sprout said with approval. "I can see why Hogwarts chose them during the sorting."
"I'd say they were acting as Prefects, but Prefects aren't that responsible," Minerva said, wishing all her classes had students like Mr. Potter and Malfoy in them. She was hopeful that the upcoming class with the first year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws would improve as the two boys were working with Patil and Bones now.
Dumbledore was struck by a memory of a young Tom Riddle holding court among his fellow students but quickly brushed it off, Tom had never laughed and joked with them the way Harry was and he certainly hadn't included students from all four houses. Still… something nibbled at the edge of his thoughts.
"Th-they are very at-atentive in class," Quirrell offered nervously, managing to keep his stuttering to a minimum, much to the rest of the staff's relief.
"Yes," Snape drawled out, "they are… marginally acceptable this year," he grudgingly admitted.
"High praise," Madame Pomphrey said with a grin.
"Didn't sound high to me," Hagrid said, while considering the matter, "though I suppose it is more praise than he usually offers."
"I'll explain later," Professor Kettleburn told his assistant.
Dumbledore chuckled, still trying to figure out what he was missing but put it aside for the moment as the teachers got into a spirited discussion on the different methods of motivating students.
0o0o0o0o
"What happened to your hair?" Lily asked as James hung up his cloak. "And where are your eyebrows?" she added before he could answer.
"Erm, we managed to master the shaving charm," James admitted. "Don't suppose we have any hair growth potions on hand?"
"I was under the impression you already knew it," she teased, "and yes, bathroom cabinet."
"This was all done wandlessly," James said proudly.
"Really?" Lily asked. "Wait! How did… Nevermind, just tell me what happened."
"Me and the boys were working on the candle lighting spell but making little progress when we figured out that it's not the complexity of the spell that matters, but how well you know it and we've all been casting shaving charms every day for the last twenty years," he explained.
"It's not how much you like a spell, it's how often you use it," Lily said thoughtfully.
"Mum… Da, where'd all your hair go?" Ginny asked as she and Flora stared. It wasn't the strangest thing they'd seen when their father was involved, but it was up there.
"Accident with a shaving shaving charm," James replied. "I was just about to go use some hair growth potion to fix it."
"We used up all of the hair growth potion last month when Mum showed us Rapunzel," Flora reminded him.
"I'd forgotten about that," James said. "That was a mess, though I'm still impressed with how you made rope ladders out of hair."
"Don't remind me," Lily said, "it took forever to get everyone's hair back to normal and poor Evie was more hair than girl."
"I guess I'll have to go and buy some then," James said with a frown, not wanting to be seen in public, bald as an egg.
"Or owl order some," Ginny pointed out. "Unless you need hair for something right away I'd order some."
"Now that's a good idea," James said, "in fact, I'm going to do that right now."
"He could have had one of the elves go buy some," Flora said after their father had left.
"True, but now we have more time to tease him about being bald," Ginny said with a smile.
"Do we still have any bowling ball polish?" Flora asked with a grin.
"Definitely James' kids," Lily said as the two rushed off to torture their father.
"I was half convinced you'd cloned them," Harry said, making Lily jump.
"Where'd you come from?" Lily asked before she recovered. "And don't bother with any of the old joke responses, I've heard them all before," she added.
"Well, DADA was dull, I already know all the material, so after coming up with a study plan for the four houses first years I thought I'd pop home and relax a little," Harry explained.
"How are classes?" she asked eagerly.
"Pretty easy so far," Harry replied, "haven't had a single problem teaching my classmates yet. Of course they are an intelligent bunch. Now Draco has his work cut out for him, because while most of his classmates are fairly bright, Crabbe and Goyle aren't, but they seem to take directions well, especially when it's Draco explaining things."
"No problems with Slytherin?" Lily asked, recalling how James had been through most of school.
"Not with any of the students in my year and I haven't had much experience with the upper years yet," Harry offered. "Of course their head of house can be a right bastard." Harry grinned widely.
"Language," Lily chided him but couldn't stop herself from smiling. "Thank you for helping Severus, what he does is not only important, but dangerous as well."
"I know," Harry said seriously, "far too many Death Eaters escaped prosecution and someone has to keep an eye on them."
Harry went limp and conserved his oxygen as he was smothered in motherly pride. Thankfully she released him long before he ran out of breath.
"I'm so proud of you!" Lily said. "You definitely got your brains from me!"
Harry smiled. Having a real family was every bit as wonderful as he'd ever dreamed it would be. He'd have to remember to do something nice for Luna, or considering everything he'd done for her so far, continue doing nice things for Luna.
Lily smiled brightly. "Now, would you like to talk about how you're getting along with a certain group of girls or tell me how you are getting to Hogwarts and back so quickly?"
"Blackmail?" Harry asked in disbelief.
"Parental responsibility," Lily countered.
"Sounds a lot like blackmail to me," he said.
"It can be both," Lily assured him, "in fact it often is. You'll need to know that for when you have children of your own, which I hope is at least eight or nine years away."
"Same here," Harry agreed readily. "So… uncomfortable conversation or revealing one of my secrets?"
"Yep," Lily agreed.
"So by revealing my secret I can completely avoid uncomfortable questions about my current relationships, which I am not even completely sure of?" Harry asked cautiously.
"Not forever, but for at least a couple of months," Lily replied.
"Sold!" Harry said firmly. "It's in my room."
Typing by: fyrewolf5