Chapter Three ~ Answers
"Lily, no wonder you stink at Transfiguration, you don't pay attention!" James yelled, completely exasperated. After much wheedling on Lily's part, James had agreed to tutor her for a little while in Transfiguration. Well, from Lily's point of view it was wheedling, from James' it was the result of some evil power Lily possessed. He was the perfect tutor, Lily had decided, mostly based on the fact that anyone was better than McGonagall. James hadn't been willing to in the first place, but he 'grudgingly agreed' from Lily's standpoint. On the other hand, James could be heard muttering at random intervals the next day, "I've been had." Most were inclined to agree with James, but they just told him he should have known better than to try and argue with Lily. James reviewed his conversation with Lily from last night, where had he gone wrong?
"You want me to tutor you," James had repeated, completely dumbstruck, after she had asked him to help her. And this was Lily asking him, the Prefect who could do no wrong! James was a Prefect as well, but he only kept up the nice image for the teachers, though they always suspected him for some reason.
He had noticed when McGonagall had reprimanded her earlier that day during class, but he didn't think much of it; he'd been caught during class before, though not recently. Lily had only starting not paying attention this year, but James had been practicing since his very first day at Hogwarts.
"Yes of course, James. That's what I just said, didn't I?" she had replied, aggravated.
"I don't think that one measly homework assignment is worth tutoring lessons, Lily. They don't add up," he had jokingly replied. "Not to mention the fact that that was back in fourth year." Lily had just set her jaw and arched her eyebrows. Oops, wrong move number one.
"Not equal," she had said in disgust. "You got 120 on that assignment. I pulled you out of the gutter in Charms. Besides, you said you owed me. What, so now the great James Potter is going back on his word?" James scowled, one assignment and tutoring lesson weren't the same thing. That should have been the end of the discussion. Unfortunately, for James, it wasn't.
"I didn't say I owed you dozens of hours of my free time. I'll give you a Transfiguration assignment, if that's what you want," he'd countered. Lily huffed and crossed her arms.
"That won't help, James. You understood Charms; you were just too lazy to do the work. I don't understand Transfiguration at all. I NEED HELP!" she said desperately, and James just rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in frustration. If she hadn't been so difficult about it, he thought, he would have done it just as a favor, but this was too much.
"I'll say you do," he muttered under his breath. Lily had acted rather calm until this point, James noticed. Too bad I ruined it, he recalled ruefully.
"James!" Lily had cried in indignation. James cringed, saying that hadn't been too smart of a move either.
"I never promised to help you Lily, don't try and trap me into it!" James was now fretting, and getting all jumbled. Lily, however, was as poignant as ever, and countered with, "You said you should help me." She emphasized it as if said meant the same thing as promise. Lily had recovered from her temper flare, and was now stating her points simply and with a large, self-satisfied smirk.
"I did not," he had yelled in desperation, and then they simultaneously recognized his error.
"Remember last night, James?" Lily asked, triumphant at having mixed around James' words. James just groaned.
"But I was just apologizing, that doesn't count!" Ooh, James thought, wincing, three strikes and I'm out.
"So, what you're saying is that your apology meant nothing?" She asked the question with such plausible innocence, but looking back, Lily held about as much innocence as a manticore. She had him with that comment, and they both knew it. Lily hadn't really done much; James had backed himself into a corner. He was obscurely aware of this; however, he was still mad at how Lily had twisted his words and made him do something he didn't want—and knew he shouldn't have—to do.
While James was devastated at the thought of spending Tuesday and Thursday evenings with Lily (except when Quidditch interfered), Sirius was ecstatic. It was Wednesday, and all day he pestered Lily by saying things like, "How'd you do it Lily?" and, "I'd never thought I'd see James get tricked into something!" and multitudes of similar things. Lily upheld that no trick had gone on, but of course she knew better.
The next day, Lily learned that Sirius particularly loved to say his little tidbits of amazement during her lesson, because then he got to say them in front of James too. Twice the fun, Sirius thought with a grin. He took an odd joy in watching his best friend get severely annoyed. After every comment James would get so upset, he would look back and wonder how he had gotten himself into this mess, just as he had done moments ago. Lily would get all huffy and glare like always.
That first Thursday in the common room concluded that all remaining lessons would be held in the Library—not exactly Sirius' favorite place in school, and he didn't visit there very much at all, at least not without James' cloak. Sadly, it seemed, the new location didn't faze him much at all, though Madam Haslett, the ancient librarian, had inquired if he was an exchange student. Sirius had looked at her oddly and not replied. Probably Hungarian, she thought, for no other reason than she had ordered horrid takeout from a Hungarian restaurant once and it had made her sick to her stomach. Madam Haslett was a very odd old woman.
If she had truly known that it was the infamous Sirius Black she might have fainted; he was number one on her list of students to reprimand. Simple Charms and How to Apply Them was approximately six years overdue, and she was furious about it. In the grand scheme of things, he was probably better off being Hungarian.
Book-stealer or Hungarian, Sirius was merely a nuisance to Lily and James, who tried very hard to ignore his antics but found it difficult. He had an endless supply of obnoxious comments that he oh-so-gladly bestowed upon them. Lily was trying to read up on some particularly difficult material about animal-human transfiguration before the test scheduled on it next week and her frustration was growing and growing. Good thing James knows an awful lot about it; otherwise, I'd be toast, she thought. Sirius even offered his own brand of advice while James was off returning a book to the shelf: "Never try transfiguring into a porcupine," he said. "They smell."
Lily huffed loudly, then whispered, "I wouldn't think you of all people would notice," and glared at him violently.
Sirius pondered that momentarily and replied, "You know James is only doing this because he likes you." With that, her patience finally snapped.
"Sirius!" she yelped loudly, and then sighed disgustedly. "Really. Only you would say something like that." She would have continued, but she realized all too late that she had just yelled in the Library. She saw Madam Haslett walking over. I'll kill Sirius for getting me kicked out of the Library when I need to study, she thought, a murderous glance flickering across her face. Sirius grinned back and she added as an afterthought, I'll do it very, very, slowly.
"Lily," Madam Haslett exclaimed. "Please calm down, we can't have you disrupting anything. I'll give you one more chance; but, only because I know you didn't mean to." She walked back to the checkout counter, slightly disgruntled.
Sirius looked disappointed, Lily looked relieved, and James, having returned from replacing the book, looked confused. He, of course, had no idea what had just happened. Once Lily's relief faded, the most accurate way to describe her face would be to say she was sending a death wish with her eyes. Lily's eyes were very expressive, if you knew how to read them. Most guys in Hogwarts agreed that they were beautiful as well; you lost yourself in their green depths if you weren't careful. If you were even more careless you could earn yourself a death glare from her, in the mildest terms it was an unpleasant experience. In this case, the recipient of her glare—Sirius—kept smiling.
James witnessed the exchange between Lily and Sirius, and was even more thoroughly confused than before. "You know, I hate secrets," he said congenially.
"Funny you should say that, James," Lily said, a specious smile on her face. James eyed her suspiciously while Lily tried to hide her smirk. James should have been much more wary of her after the tutoring incident, but he wasn't.
"Why so funny?" he asked innocently. Sirius looked devilishly happy.
"Not funny so much as… coincidental. I have something I want to know from you as well." James looked mildly surprised. "Consider it a trade."
"Sure," he replied simply. "But you first." Lily grinned slyly, and Sirius whooped with the expectation of humility, earning him an invitation out of the Library from Madam Haslett.
"Those silly exchange students," she muttered under her breath, eyeing Sirius slowly as he walked out the double doors. It's not fair, Sirius thought crossly as he left, how does Lily trick him so easily? That girl has got to give me lessons. He waited right outside the doors, hoping still to witness something interesting.
Lily watched Sirius get kicked out of the Library with much pleasure, especially since he made less than a tenth of the noise she had. "Well, it's nice to know a good reputation counts for something," she said happily. "You'd think that being a Prefect would make it easier for us to get into trouble wouldn't you, James?" He nodded his head. James had a way of slipping out of trouble at the last minute, always the man with the excuse, the alibi, and that winning grin to top it off. Teachers suspected him, but they were never really quite able to corner him. They had no choice but to give him the Prefect badge after receiving such good grades and spectacular O.W.L.s.
James looked expectantly at Lily, waiting for an answer. "Oh, right… about Sirius…" she began, and then thought better of it. "Well you know him, he says whatever pops into his head and…" she stopped again. Lily was astonished at how she was acting, was it so hard to repeat what he said? When she proposed the deal she didn't think she would have the hard part of the bargain. She quickly repeated what Sirius had said, and cautiously laughed.
James looked at her, a tiny twinkle in his eye. "You yelled at him for that?" he asked, and then began to laugh. His reaction eased her considerably, and she smiled.
"Yeah, it's silly. But I just get so fed up with him. I haven't yelled at him in over two weeks, he was due worse than his Library book," she said, then laughed. Little did she know that the book in question sat proudly in the boys' dorm room on their official Table of Conquest. It was one of Sirius' first offenses, and he held it dear to his heart in a rather twisted fashion. It was joined by many other objects, a few plucked from Filch's own office.
"That's just Sirius, I guess. Couldn't change him if you tried," he said, shaking his head and chuckling. Lily laughed with him, but Madam Haslett sent them a warning look.
From Sirius' view through a crack in the door he had witnessed Lily get very ruffled moments ago. Suddenly her lips moved very fast, and then she laughed nervously, a little bit later James did too. Then, Madam Haslett gave them the same look he had received, yet they were still in there. Now, all of a sudden, she became very serious, and he guessed she was asking her question. He did indeed know what she was going to ask: Why in the world had James broken it of with Evelyn? Remus had talked with him about how Lily had asked around about it, but Sirius had no more clue than anyone else. And he calls me his best friend, Sirius thought ruefully.
Turning back to their conversation, Sirius watched as James suddenly looked taken aback. He gazed at the ground momentarily, looking somewhat lost. Sirius desperately wished that eavesdropping would actually do some use, but they were sitting much too far away.
He blinked quickly and hit himself over the head. Wasn't he a wizard? He quickly performed the Listening Charm, silently thanking Lily. She had drilled it into his head when she had been giving him Charms lessons. He would have asked Professor Malchite, but had always sort of thought the guy was a little creepy. He heard Lily's voice first, albeit very faintly. He had no idea whether he was bad at this charm or Lily was just having trouble finding her voice.
"Wow, I had no idea it was like that," Lily said quietly as she dragged her finger back and forth across the pages of her parchment absently. Her eyebrows furrowed in thought.
"What did you think it was like?" James said defensively, busying himself with flipping through pages of the Transfiguration text. He was curious about what she, and probably everyone else, thought about the break-up. But the way she said it made him just the slightest bit offended.
"I didn't know what to think," she said with a sigh. "Usually when people are going to break up you can tell. It was a shock, that's why I wanted to know." Lily was blunt, no doubt about that, and it unsettled James. He was pretty much used to achieving what he wanted without too much trouble. "I think Evelyn has a right to know that as well," she said daringly. James cleared his throat and pretended not to hear.
"Well," he said. "Now that we've wasted almost half an hour of our studying time, how about we get back to work?" he offered in a desperate attempt to change the subject. Lily frowned, knowing he was being stubborn.
"Ok, well Animagi are…" James started reading out of a book. Sirius took off the Listening Charm, disappointed. He hadn't really learned anything useful—blackmail-worthy, that is. Sometimes he wondered what goes on in James's head underneath that mop of hair. Evelyn was beautiful and a really great person to be with in his opinion. He got up and began the walk back to Gryffindor common room, pulling out a stash of Filibuster Fireworks. Filch's office was on the way, and he there needed to be some excitement this evening.