The Lesson

It was three weeks after James arrived at Hogwarts that he finally felt his misery begin to dissipate.

It was barely a blip, a tiny little bit of happiness carving its way into his chest, but when he woke up for his third week of classes he realized that the green of his four-poster bed did not offend him quite so much. He laid in bed for a moment, stubbornly committed to not ruining his own good mood by not paying a single bit of attention to in dorm mates.

Not that he gave them much attention under normal circumstances.

Least of all the sentient grease slick known as Severus Snape.

But today, today of all days, he would not let him and his oddly, and supremely, smug smile get to him.

Because today was the day the first years would have their first flying lesson.

James thought, given his unrelenting dissatisfaction at how everything had turned out so far, that he was going to spend the next seven years of his life stewing and simmering and avoiding the color green as much as humanly possible. He had fully committed to it, so much so, in fact, that he still hadn't told his parents about his sorting.

Word had more than likely already reached them. Gossip and rumor tended to travel fast in their kind of circles and he had little doubt that a juicy tidbit of information of this magnitude had already made its way through. His parents had long since lost their appetite for high society, but his mother still found the time for the occasional cuppa with a few of her school friends.

James threw off the covers and sat up, a full three hours before their flying lessons were meant to start, and practically apparated into his clothes. After three attempts to put on his sweater vest and a near choking incident with his vomit-colored tie, he stepped into his shoes at the same time.

He was fully aware of his housemates watching him with bleary eyes from under their covers, particularly Snape, but he pointedly ignored their looks.

He refused to allow them to ruin his day.

His glorious, perfectly good, wonderful day spent on the back of a broomstick.

Truth be told, he couldn't quite tell if he was more excited about getting a little air clean of any and all Slytherin smell, or the prospect of finally getting to do something he was good at.

James sat back on his bed and bounced his legs up and down, counting down the minutes until the Great Hall would open for breakfast. Across the circular room, illuminated by the soft green glow of the lake above them, Snape sat with his shoulders bent over a book. He used his wand to supplement the meager light. It had a sallowing effect on his already yellowy skin and James had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from saying so. But then, he thought better of it.

After all, there was little he would enjoy more than being the one to wipe the oily expression off his face.

It had occurred to him after about three nights of being forced to sleep twenty paces away from him, that Snape was about as miserable as they came. Bitter, jealous, and driven by a compulsion to prove himself, he seemed to have made it his personal mission to torture James by his mere presence alone. Perhaps it was a touch of a depressed paranoia or perhaps he was simply trying to aim his rampant dissatisfaction on anyone but himself, but James was sure he had never developed such a strong disliking to someone so quickly and with such vigor in his life.

The moment the Great Hall was open, James practically sprinted up the stairs.

Mavis had promised to meet him by the entrance although it took a great deal of cajoling on his part and numerous promises of helping sort through owl pellets to get her to see the light of day before absolutely necessary. Unless it involved owls or owls adjacent, she was harder to convince to change her behavior than his mother.

But there she was, face puffy with sleep and pockets stuffed full to the brim with owlets, ready to greet him just like she promised she would be.

A pair of the owlets turned their heads around to look at him as he rushed towards her, cooing as if they were actually excited to see him. She brushed the tops of their heads with practiced fingers, calming them instantly.

"Morning, Mave," James greeted with far more enthusiasm than was warranted for so early in the morning. "Thanks for meeting me."

"Always, Jim," She said, causing him to scowl at the use of the nickname she knew he hated.

Her way of getting back at him for the early wakeup call, he was absolutely certain. There was no one quite as able as her to get under his skin with as much precision. Closer to a sister than a friend, Mavis Fawley had been an ever-constant presence in his life from basically the moment he was born. Their dads, separated by several decades but no less close for that fact, were near constant companions. It was only natural that James and Mavis would be as well.

"Are you excited?" James asked, practically dragging her into the Great Hall. It was not, strictly speaking, allowed for students to sit at different house tables, but he wouldn't let a silly thing like rules keep him from enjoying his first good day at Hogwarts.

"For?"

"Flying lessons." He tried not too sound too offended, but the emotion came through in the form of the borderline squeaky quality to his voice. He cleared his throat, a blush lighting up his pale cheeks, and tried again. "This is what we've been waiting for."

"You've been waiting for," Mavis said, making herself comfortable at the end of the Hufflepuff table without so much as a second glance in either direction. "You know I'm hopeless on a broom."

"Now's the time to learn. Think about flying with all your owls, not a care in the world…" He tried to sound as enticing as humanly possible.

She was unconvinced.

She reached forward and grabbed a bit of cold chicken and began to shred it with her fingers. He held out his hand and took a few shreds, very accustomed to the routine after eleven years of friendship. He slipped his hand into her pocket on his side and smiled when he felt the tiniest nip at the tips of his fingers.

"You still haven't told your parents yet, have you?"

The change in conversation caught him off guard. He stuttered and spluttered for a moment, tempted to try and lie his way through just to save himself the embarrassment of having to admit that he was an unmitigated coward, but he thought better of it when he caught sight of her peering out him out of the corner of her eye.

Perhaps he didn't belong in Gryffindor if he could not even muster up the gobstones to write a simple letter to his parents. It wasn't like they would disown him, although the thought had occurred to him repeatedly during any number of his sleepless nights.

Across the hall, a lumpy boy walked over to the Gryffindor table and sat down.

James knew he made the mistake of making eye contact with him, but the trap had already been set before he could look away.

Peter Pettigrew, if he remembered correctly was only able to look at James and Mavis for so long before he became overwhelmed and looked away to focus his attention intently on his growing plate of food.

He learned his name during the rollcall.

It suited him.

Like a stutter.

Or a Sweaty palm.

James inwardly groaned, wondering when the exact moment had happened that he became such an absolute arse.

It had to have happened at some point in the night. The green of his bedsheets must have somehow poisoned him, must have somehow seeped into his brain and turned him into his own worst nightmare. Which was, of course, being an insufferable git. He refused to consider the other possibilities, namely that it was his own fault that he was so unhappy.

No.

That would be just stupid.

So instead he sank further into the seat and tried to avoid eye contact for the rest of the meal. Mavis stared at him, pale eyebrows furrowed together and mouth pursed. She knew what he was doing, but she had the decency to not say anything else.

"James, have you told your parents?" She asked again, tone just a little bit more probing than before.

"No. Why would I run the risk of giving them both a heart attack? You know how old they are. One bad bit of bad news and they could both keel over. Can you imagine the guilt?" James said, progressively recognizing the flimsy nature of the excuse with each word he spoke. But he stuck with it, hoping that Mavis might, when faced with the possibility of listening to his yammering, drop the subject entirely and let him talk about what he actually wanted to talk about.

Namely, their first flying lessons.

But she had never let him get away with anything and he wasn't sure why he thought three weeks of Hufflepuff would have changed that about her.

"It isn't all miserable, James," Mavis said, trying to be placating, although it failed spectacularly. "You said Slughorn has been very impressed by you."

He could feel the misery creeping back in and he tried to force it down with such a ferocity it almost made him sick.

"Impressed by my family name, you mean," James said, and Mavis reached over and pinched his arm. "Oi!"

"Stop being miserable."

"Easy for you to say, dressed in your nice yellow and not surrounded by psychopaths who probably want to kill you in your sleep."

Mavis pursed her lips and pinched his arm again. "James, don't be so dramatic. They aren't going to kill you," She paused, smirking at him when he looked over at her. "But they might fart of you pillows when you aren't looking."

James moaned and dropped his head to the table. If the Great Hall had been full, it would have drawn a deal of attention over to them. Instead, the few early risers glanced in their direction for only a moment before they went back to their quiet breakfasts. All, of course, except for the lumpy Gryffindor. He continued to stare at James and James, feeling trapped, continued to stare back until Mavis snapped her fingers in front of his face and pulled his attention back.

In his distraction, another boy had joined them at the table. He was of the gangly sort, pale as the moon and the physical manifestation of exhaustion. He sat beside Mavis and put a singular chocolate roll on his plate.

"Mavis, what am I going to tell my mum and dad?" James continued, ignoring the new boy for now. His thoughts had already started and he didn't like to change the direction of his thinking until he got to the end. He wasn't particularly good at focusing and he didn't like to disadvantage himself in that regard any more than necessary.

"The truth."

"A serious answer, please."

"Slytherin is a good house," The new boy said through a mouth full of chocolate. "Ambition is a valuable trait."

"I'm sorry, who are you?" James asked, lifting up his head to peer around Mavis.

"James, this is my new friend Remus. Remus, this is my old friend James."

"Old friend?"

"Oldest friend," Mavis corrected, smiling at the look on James' face. "But, Remus is right you know. All of the houses have their value."

"My dad is going to be so disappointed."

James, up until that moment, had been overly dramatic in his displeasure of being sorted into Slytherin. And he genuinely thought, after three weeks, that his unhappiness was finally starting to dissipate. But he could hear it in his own voice, hear the way it hitched up at the end. He genuinely dressed letting his parents know about his sorting. They probably already knew, but he just couldn't bring himself to be the one to tell them.

And he was running out of excuses to not write back to his mum.

Mavis grabbed his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

"Probably not. Your mum wasn't a Gryffindor."

"No, but she sure as hell wasn't a Slytherin."

"My dad wanted me to be Ravenclaw and you know how much mum wanted me to be a Slytherin," Mavis said, lowering her voice just a little bit more so that only James would hear her. "We can be disappointments together."

Remus shifted in place and glanced at the pair of them out of the corner of his eye.

"This isn't how I thought this would go, Mave."

"I know. But you can't very well be miserable for the next seven years."

"I can try. You know how I am when I commit to something," James said, and he was thankful that he didn't have to force the tiniest bit of mirth that found its way back into his voice.

"Do you want to go to Owlry with me on Friday? Remus has already agreed," She tried to coax him, glancing at Remus. "The owls miss you."

James, seeing that she wasn't going to take no for an answer, nodded. Mavis smiled and pulled her hand back.

"This doesn't mean I'm going to stop feeling sorry for myself," James said out of the corner of his mouth as he finished up the rest of his breakfast. "I estimate I can get at least a month more pity out of you."

"Only if you help me excise that boil under Owlivia's left wing. And I am only willing to listen to you complain twice a day, at most."

James scowled, losing the rest of his appetite.

"Three times a day until I don't want to smother my housemates, and I get special allowances for weekends. And I'll help you hold her down, but you know I gag every time so don't get made if I spew all over your shoes."

"Deal." Mavis shook his hand and happily tucked into her pile of fluffy eggs. He knew that she knew that she didn't need to negotiate about the owls. He would always help her without question, even if he liked to pretend otherwise. "Are you going to finish that?" She asked, gesturing to his half-finished ham. He pushed it towards her with a half-hearted grimace and tuned her out as she turned to speak with Remus.

James spent the rest of the time it took her to finish eating forcing the brief interlude of unhappiness to an end.

Because today was his glorious, perfectly good, wonderful day spent on the back of a broomstick.

And he wasn't about to let that get ruined.

The first years clustered together on the training grounds, excitement hanging over them like a heavy cloud. Mavis and Remus, having finished their breakfast at a pace James could describe as glacial, stood next to him at first. He tried to blend in with the Hufflepuffs but he felt bit like a zebra trying not to be seen with a bunch of horses.

He only joined the rest of the Slytherins when forced.

But he would not let that sour him.

James looked down at the school broom like it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Which, of course, it was not. It was a gnarled, knotty thing that had probably had more asses on it than a seat on the Knight Bus. But at the moment, it was his absolutely best friend.

It was the first time all four houses were put back together since the term started and the tension was palpably felt. The Slytherins on his right and left, Snape – much to James' unmitigated horror- and a pimply boy named Rosier, watched the other houses with disdain and James was shocked to discover the feeling was reflected by the others as well.

Well, not the Hufflepuffs.

It never seemed to be the Hufflepuffs.

Maybe he should have been a Hufflepuff.

James looked back down at the broom, his temporary best friend that he decided to name Harvell, and focused all his mental energy on it. The lesson was simple enough. Hold his hand above the broom, say 'Up!' with conviction, grab, mount, hover, land, repeat. He would blister through the steps, he was absolutely sure, so he looked down the row at Mavis to make sure she wasn't struggling too much.

He wished he could be next to her, the desire equally supportive as it was selfish.

But he was shocked to discover than Remus, sickly though he may be, was weirdly adept with a broom.

It was already in his hand and he was halfway through helping Mavis summon her own off the ground. James was even more shocked to discover that several others of his classmate had progressed just as far and he was at risk of bringing up the rear if he didn't focus. So he pushed the thoughts of the others from his mind and quickly summoned Harvell.

It slammed into his hand hard enough to bruise.

But he ignored the pain as he straddled it and popped up to a hover with ease.

The first to do so, he thought, until he saw Sirius Black doing the exact same thing at the opposite end of the long line of first years.

Black turned to look down the line, expression bored. He was practically lounging on the broom, hovering like it was the easiest thing in the world. James scowled and he could hear his mum's voice in his head if he continued to do so his face would stick that way. Black looked at each of the other first years, pausing briefly on Mavis in a way that caused James to scowl even further, before he lowered himself to the ground with all the ease of an elegant bird.

He looked over at James last.

Whatever was in his expression, benign or not, James felt his hackles raise instantly at the apparent challenge.

He was never one to trust a pureblood ponce like Sirius Black, a policy borne from far too many years spent rubbing elbows with them and completely devoid of any and all irony considering James Potter was, himself, a pureblood ponce, but he was even less likely to trust them when they were looking at him like that.

James scowled and hovered on his broom a little higher, making sustained eye contact with Black, who, in turn, did the same. They each rose higher and higher until the flight instructor barked at them to float back to the ground.

But neither would land first and James was absolutely certain Black was doing it on purpose to mess with him.

It seemed he was now going to replace misery with paranoia. What a fun development. But at least he would be paranoid on a broom and not trapped in his dungeon of dormitory all the time.

It was the little things.

James lifted his chin and floated once again, smirking to himself when he saw Black do the same.

We love a bratty eleven year old who thinks his life is literally over based on the house he gets sorted into. I promise he won't be miserable forever. But he will be dramatic forever. Harry had to get it from somewhere.