Chapter Two: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

"An O, Miss Black! But then again, hardly unexpected, is it?"

Lily smiled modestly at her Potions professor, Horace Slughorn, as he handed the class back their essays on the effects of Felix Felicis. The 'O' was inscribed on the front in bright green ink.

She twisted around in her chair to survey the room. Two rows back, Sirius was scowling at his paper, no doubt annoyed at her far more superior mark. But what gave her real satisfaction was the inscrutable expression on James Potter's face. That meant she'd gotten better than him, didn't it? If he'd gotten an Outstanding too, there was no way he'd sit quiet as Slughorn lavished her with praise.

Lily settled back into her seat. Life was good. She'd splashed Potter with water last night, Arabella was in the chair beside her, and she was still top of the class. She only wished she'd had a camera with her to snap his expression as he got a soaking.

"Pay attention, Lily," Arabella whispered, nudging her. Lily sat up and listened. Slughorn was speaking.

"…one month to complete it. You'll be paired with the person alphabetically beside you in the register. Remember, this constitutes sixty percent of your end-of-year mark!"

"What's going on?" Lily hissed. "What's he talking about?"

"Potions project," Arabella replied out of the corner of her mouth.

Lily experienced a sinking feeling in her stomach as she replayed the words paired with the person alphabetically beside you in the register. Why did things like this always seem to happen to her?

"Off you go!" Slughorn boomed. There was screeching as students got up and started setting up cauldrons. Lily stayed in her seat for several more seconds before standing up with a sigh.

It could be worse, she knew. She could have been paired with Potter, who was safely partnered with Henry Partington. But her cousin Sirius was almost as bad. He had his head up now and was watching her drag her feet to him with amusement clear in his gaze. She wanted to claw that smirk off his face.

"Lily, my darling blood-traitor cousin," he greeted.

"Sirius," she replied shortly. "You can go get the ingredients while I set the cauldron up."

He bounded up gracefully and over to the ingredients cupboard. She had wondered if he would argue with her order, but the relationship they shared was different to hers and Potter's; Sirius preferred to showcase his disdain with drawling half-compliments and contemptuous gallantry instead of biting insults. Lily almost preferred Sirius' method. Since the day of the Sorting six years ago they had never got into a proper row.

Whereas, Lily thought bitterly, I had one with Potter not twenty-four hours ago.

Sirius returned with all the necessary parts of the potion in his arms. By this time Lily had a fire roaring under the pewter cauldron and was stirring it as per the instructions on the board. They were making the Erumpent Potion, an extremely volatile concoction liable to explode if brewed incorrectly, and Lily triple-checked the steps to ensure everything was proceeding well.

She and Sirius kept their exchanges short and restricted to ones absolutely necessary.

"Pass me that knife."

"It says crushed belladonna next."

"Don't forget to stir three times quarter-clockwise before the seven times anti-clockwise."

By the time half the lesson had gone Lily had almost let herself relax. If she had been working with Potter, she thought, no doubt she would have pushed him face-first into the potion by now. Maybe working with Sirius wasn't as bad as she had thought it would be.

Naturally that was the moment things started to go wrong.

"Listen up, class!" Slughorn called through the haze of green steam permeating the classroom. "I will now be taking the instructions off the board, since in your NEWTs you'll have to list them from memory!"

Lily had a fairly good memory. She was confident that they could finish this potion, even without the guidelines, but just as she was about to add powdered Erumpent horn Sirius grabbed her wrist and jerked it back.

"What are you doing?" he snarled. "It's unicorn hair, not horn!"

"Get your hands off me," she said coldly. Without waiting for him to do so she pulled it out of his grasp herself. "And it is Erumpent horn, you imbecile. I've read the instructions."

"So have I," he countered. "And it said hair."

Not willing to engage in a lengthy discussion about this, Lily turned back to the potion in clear dismissal. She was just about to add the powder again when a hand snaked past her and dropped a slender silver thread into the cauldron.

The results were instantaneous.

Bang!

Lily dropped to the floor and curled into a ball. Over her head she felt a rush of hot air as the cauldron exploded outward, the addition of the wrong ingredient igniting the mixture. All around her she heard screams and clangs as the potion made short work of the dungeon.

"Sirius and Delilah Black!" Slughorn roared. His usually affable demeanour had been reduced to shreds, along with his expensive waistcoat. Lily was not the only one fighting a smile as she stood up and took in his distinctly ruffled appearance.

"You're supposed to be my best student, Miss Black!" he shouted. "And you, Mr Black! I assume you were the one who added the wrong ingredient?"

Lily glanced around. It was a scene of pure destruction, with cauldrons upended, students splattered with unidentifiable things, and a multicoloured brew spreading over the stone floor. When she looked down at herself she saw that there were holes in her robes.

Sirius had fared no better. His hair stuck up so wildly it was almost as bad as Potter's, and there was a smear of red on his forehead. To Lily's delight she saw it was a squashed beetle. God, now she really did wish she had a camera.

"Yes, professor," Sirius said tonelessly. "I added unicorn hair."

"You're extremely lucky I've decided this isn't a stupid Marauder prank, Mr Black," Slughorn said sternly. "You can be sure Professor Dumbledore will hear of this. And Professor McGonagall too, as your Head of House," he added to Lily. She cringed.

"Now you two go off to the Hospital Wing," Slughorn said. "But mark my words, you will get detention for this!"

Lily paled. "Detention?"

"Yes, Miss Black. Detention. Now, to the Hospital Wing!"

She bit her tongue to prevent a rant on how it had been Sirius who had added the unicorn hair, not her, so why the hell was she being punished for it too? And her record had been so perfect! She kept her bottom lip clamped tightly under her incisors the whole terse walk to the Hospital Wing, so that she wouldn't break out and scream at Sirius. She was Head Girl! Didn't that count for anything? Wasn't her word worth more than a boy who was in detention every other week and hung out with James Potter, whose family was notorious for being high in the graces of You-Know-Who? Granted, her family was too, but she was in Gryffindor! She was different! There was a reason they called her the White Sheep: she was the odd Black out!

The half-coherent babble of rage repeated in her mind until they reached the Hospital Wing. Sirius took it upon himself to stride ahead and call out, "Madam Pomfrey!"

The plump young woman bustled out from her office. She stopped short at the sight of them.

"Goodness gracious, whatever happened to you?"

He smiled charmingly. "A tiny incident in Potions, Poppy. We're fine really. Just got sent here to make sure."

"Oh, you poor dear," she cooed. Lily felt a familiar pulse of irritation. Why was it that all the Marauders had to do was turn on their million-watt smiles to have everyone falling at their feet? Even the teachers seemed to be ignoring the dark rumours of torture and other unsavoury activities that surrounded the kings of Slytherin House.

Well, rumours to everyone else. Lily was under no illusions as to the limits of her family or the Potters. Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew were much less dangerous, but hardly better than the rest of their House.

She stood still as Madam Pomfrey gave Sirius a Pepper-up Potion and pronounced him free to leave. The same happened to her. She exited the Hospital Wing with her ears ringing and found Marlene and Arabella waiting for her.

"Lily!" Marlene exclaimed. "Are you alright?"

Lily smiled reassuringly. "I'm fine. Really. But I have detention, can you believe it? And it's all Sirius' fault!"

Arabella snapped her fingers. "Speaking of which, McGonagall told me to give you this. It has details of your detention."

Lily unfurled the piece of parchment.

Miss Black,

Arrive at the Great Hall tonight at eight p.m. You will be cleaning all the trophies in the Trophy Room without magic. Tomorrow, be there at the same time and place, as Filch will inform you of the details of your other detentions then. Thirty points have been taken from Gryffindor. You have detention all week.

Professor McGonagall

Lily crushed the parchment in her fist, feeling sick. She had never lost her house a single point, and now she had lost thirty. It was even worse that she was Head Girl. She was meant to be the one person Gryffindor could rely on.

Marlene saw Lily's anger and wrapped an arm around her. "I have some news that will cheer you up," she chirped.

Lily raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Sirius Black has detention for the week too. But he's lost Slytherin fifty points and," she paused for effect, "he has to spend tonight gutting tarantulas without gloves or magic!"

Lily burst into laughter, both at the image her mind conjured for her and relief that she would not be sharing her detention with him. Feeling far better – as it had been Marlene's intention to make her – she set off to her next lesson with a new spring in her step.

"Black," Filch said, looking her up and down critically. "In here."

He shuffled off. Lily waved slightly at Mrs Norris and followed the caretaker into the Trophy Room, which led off the Great Hall. The only illumination came from a handful of candles floating in mid-air, which cast a flickering yellow light over the dusty glass cases and dully gleaming shields.

"You'll stay here until all of these are spick and span, is that clear? Whole night if necessary."

Lily nodded. She had a feeling Filch was behaving rather nicely to her, since her Head duties meant she did in fact often perform the same job as him. Marlene had described a detention she had once had with Filch and it had apparently included threats of whipping. He was being positively nice to her in comparison.

"The other one should be along soon," Filch said. "I'll be here till he comes, but then I'll leave you to it."

She narrowed her eyes. "What? I'm not meant to be having detention with Sirius. He's gutting spiders with Professor Slughorn in the dungeons."

"Not your cousin, Black," Filch said with a shake of his head. "Someone else was assigned detention with me just this evening. He's late," he said disapprovingly.

Lily frantically ran through a list of frequent offenders in her head. There were two names at the very top, and if Sirius was out of the running then that left –

James Potter sauntered into the Trophy Room as though he owned it. "What did I miss?"

His gaze arrowed at her instantly. It always found her instantly; not once, in six years, had she ever been able to hide from him. A slow, predatory smile twisted his lips and bared his teeth.

Lily took a deep breath.

AN: My end of the deal: I post 2 chapters a day. Your end of the deal: review the hell out of this thing, people. Got it? Good.

(Don't worry, I won't actually hold chapters hostage or anything! They're all on their way. I spent the day editing H&H instead of my second-year dissertation, which is due tomorrow... wish me luck)

(To be fair, the diss IS finished, so things definitely aren't as bad as they could be, but I decided to try my luck and write it on Georgette Heyer. I really doubt a diss on a historical romance novelist is getting a first class...)