Lily wanted to kill him. Slow, painful, excruciatingly
painful homicide. But, said her rational side, it was hardly worth going to
Azkaban over James Potter. Besides, there were worse things than death, though
she wouldn't wish the Kiss on anybody, not even him. She might be doing him a
favor to put him out of his misery, but…no. She'd just have to go for something
that would give him a taste of his own medicine.
Speaking of medicine, that was exactly what her
hands smelled like, after yet another round of scrubbing the cauldrons.
Not only that, but during detention, dear old Professor Jenkins had made her
write several long, embarrassing notes of apology to the people she'd drugged
with her sleeping draught. She never found out which jerk James had gotten to
put one of Dr. Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks into her
cauldron, but she had her suspicions. Probably that Hufflepuff twit Gilderoy
Lockhart, who was always eager to please the older students.
This time, Lily decided that it wouldn't be enough
to simply embarrass James; she was going to make him do manual labor
like she'd had to do twice already.
***
James was in a good mood. Him and his friends had finally
managed to piece together the entire complicated spell for Animagus
Transformations. Now all that they needed to do was to actually perform it. He
suspected that actually working the spell would be much harder than finding it,
but they had plenty of time. The only bad thing was, the end of the year was
already approaching, and since they couldn't do it at any other place than
Hogwarts, they'd have to wait yet another year before they could
accompany Remus.
He was in such a good mood, in fact, that he didn't
notice his lucky quill had gone missing until Potions.
"Whatcha looking for, James?" Sirius asked him.
"My quill," he replied grumpily. "Have you--" He
stopped abruptly as he heard Sirius laughing.
"Oh, shut up," he said, but Sirius kept on laughing.
James looked up, puzzled. Sirius hadn't laughed this hard since a certain
incident the previous week involving Snape and green Jell-O. But Sirius wasn't
laughing at him, he was laughing at something behind him. James quickly turned
around and felt the blood draining from his face.
There was his lucky quill, still dripping with ink,
on the stone floor on the south side of the dungeon. And, directly above it,
was an over-exaggerated but well detailed caricature of Professor Jenkins,
complete with the rather large nose, (quaffle-sized in the picture,) the
bulging eyes, and the large, hairy wart on the chin. James probably would have
been laughing too, if he hadn't known that he was going to be in deep trouble
when the professor saw it. Which she did.
"Nice one, James," gasped Sirius, who was clutching
his stomach from laughing so hard. James' weak smile at the compliment utterly
vanished when he saw that Professor Jenkins had spotted the offending picture.
"Damn," he muttered under his breath as the professor
slowly approached the picture. Not saying a word, she picked up James' quill,
which had obviously been the one used. Still not speaking, she walked over to
where James and Sirius were stationed. James saw that she was too furious to
speak. So angry, in fact, that she looked remarkably like an overripe tomato,
though James was wise enough not to mention it during this dangerous situation.
Professor Jenkins grabbed James by the front of his
robes, dragged him over to where a stack of dirty magic cauldrons lay waiting,
and managed to choke out, "Saturday. After b-breakfast. C-clean ink now."
James nodded, and with clenched fists walked back to
his desk. He noticed that there was a little brown parcel sitting by his
cauldron.
"What's this?" he whispered to Sirius, warily eyeing
Professor Jenkins, who was now yelling at Peter and Remus that they were
absolutely hopeless.
"What? Er, I don't know. I didn't notice it was
there," Sirius replied, barely looking at the package. He was still staring at
the portrait. "I didn't know you could draw!"
"I can't," James said, annoyed.
"What do you mean?" asked Sirius, "That picture's
really good! In fact, why don't you do one of Snape for me? In hot pink dress
robes, perhaps. I'll even pay you for it."
"I told you, I can't!" James said angrily, stuffing
his books in his bag so that he could go over to wipe the ink off from the
wall.
"But--"
"I didn't draw it," James said. "Lily did. I know
she did."
"Lily?" Sirius asked skeptically. Then he grinned.
"Well, you never know in what form Mischief-Makers will show up. Say, maybe she'll
draw a picture of Snape for me."
James sighed. "Yeah, I bet she will," he told
Sirius. He noticed the parcel again, and when the professor wasn't looking, he
opened it. Inside lay a pair of pink rubber gloves and a note, reading:
ThouGht yOu mighT need these for Cauldron duty. Happy scrubbing, JAmes!!
Growling, he crumpled up the note into his clenched fist and stuck the revolting gloves into the garbage disposal. He'd stick his hands in a cauldronful of bubotuber pus before he'd wear anything pink. Speaking of pink…
James grinned as he started plotting his next prank.
"I am so good," he said to himself. Then, he caught Professor Jenkins' glaring
eye and hastily busied himself with cleaning up the portrait on the wall.
***
Lily sat on her bed, brushing her luxurious hair
before she went to sleep. Yawning, she set down her brush and walked over to
her trunk, from which she extracted a little jar.
"What do you have there, Lily?" asked Celeste a bit
sleepily.
"A new face cream," Lily replied, as she applied
some onto her forehead and cheeks and rubbed it in. "It's supposed to make my
skin softer."
"Are you sure it doesn't have any side effects or
anything?" asked Kyla. "I used some that my sister gave me once, and I couldn't
stop dancing the cha cha all day."
Lily decided not to comment on that. "No, I don't
think there's anything wrong with it," she told Kyla. "There can't be. It's
muggle cream. But if I start dancing the samba tomorrow, I give you permission
to say, 'I told you so.'"
With that, Lily recapped the little pot of cream,
placed it on her nightstand, and snuggled down onto her feather pillows.
***
"Lily?"
Lily vaguely heard someone call her name. She wasn't
sure where she was, but it seemed like she was standing in a clearing in the
Forbidden Forest.
"Lily!" someone called again.
"I'm here!" she tried to call out, but she had no
voice. She wondered if the muggle face cream she had applied last night was the
cause of her muteness. In a brief moment of panic, she had a wild thought that
maybe the muggles had discovered all about the magical world, and had learned
to make their own potions and cast their own spells. Then, her voice of reason
reminded her, the reason that they were muggles was because they couldn't
make potions or cast spells. Calming down a little, she saw a person with black
hair standing about twenty feet away from her, beside a clump of raspberry
bushes.
The person called out yet again, "Lily!" and she
approached cautiously. The person's face was blurry, as if somebody had rubbed
it over, but it was definitely a boy who was calling her.
"Who are you?" she tried to ask, but she still
couldn't talk. Instead, the boy grinned at her, (or rather, she thought
he did, she really couldn't tell,) and said, "Wake up."
"What?" thought Lily.
"Wake up, Lily," the boy said again, but this time
the voice was feminine. "Wake up, wake up…"
Lily realized that somebody was shaking her. It was
Kyla.
"Huh?" asked Lily groggily. She realized that she
had been asleep, and that she had been dreaming.
"Lily, look at your face!" Kyla shrieked.
Alarmed, Lily reached up and felt her face. It felt
normal.
"What's wrong?" she asked her friend. "Your face is
red."
"Can't be as bad as yours!" Kyla yelled, shoving a
small Art Deco mirror into Lily's hand.
Lily gaped at her reflection before letting out a
scream. Her lovely face, instead of being pale and freckled as usual, was pink.
And not rosy pink either, but bright magenta. Lily screamed again.
"Wha--Who's strangling the cat?" asked Celeste
sleepily.
"I told you!" said Kyla shrilly, pointing a finger
at Lily almost accusingly. "I told you there was something wrong with that
cream!"
"But how?" Lily wailed, rubbing at her face, hoping
it would come off. "It was muggle cream! Even an allergic reaction wouldn't
look like this! Somebody had to put something--" She stopped.
"James," she muttered through clenched teeth. "I'll
get him for this."
By now, Celeste was wide awake too. She stared at
Lily for a few moments, before bursting into peals of laughter.
"It's not funny!" Lily said crossly. "I can't go to
classes like this! And today's the last day of exams!"
"Poor Lily," giggled Celeste. "Maybe you could wear
a ski mask."
"Oh, yeah," huffed Lily. "Wear a ski mask in
early June. Great idea, Celeste!"
"It was just a suggestion," said Celeste, still
giggling. "And I was just kidding. Come on, Lil, I think it's time to introduce
you to the wonderful world of makeup."
"Makeup?" asked Lily, horrified. "I don't want to
wear makeup!"
"Would you rather go out like that?" asked Celeste
patiently.
"Well, no…"
"Then come on!" said Kyla enthusiastically.
Reluctantly, Lily let her two friends drag her over
to the makeup mirror. As they skillfully applied layers of foundation and
powder, Lily vowed to not let James get away with this. Too bad school would be
over in a few days.
'Oh well,' Lily thought, wincing as Kyla
produced a pot of sparkly green eyeshadow. 'At least I'll have time to think
about something really evil to do to him.'