| She plucked a grape, wrapped it in the square of foil, set it before me and tapped it with her wand. I missed whatever words she said, entranced by the way the runes on the crumpled silver foil lightened and spread until the entire sphere was mirror bright. "All done," she said. Lily reached into the shelves under the lab table, pulled out a heavy granite mortar and pushed it towards me. "Squish it," she said, nodding towards her foil-covered grape. I picked up the stone cup and slammed it down on the grape. It went TINK and did not squish. Interesting... She marked something down on her clipboard. "Again." I repeated the TINK a couple more times at her request and on the fourth TINK it failed, leaving grape juice splattered across the table. The foil disintegrated into flakes of silver light and was gone. Lily leaned forward excitedly. "Hey, it didn't explode! Good to know." "What! It might have exploded? And you asked me to test it!? Nice, Evans, real nice!" "Relax, Sev. There was only a 0.000025% chance that the last hit would've made the universe collapse. Nothing to worry about. Here, have a grape." She nudged the bunch over to me and scribbled on her clipboard furiously. I regarded the green fruitlets and then her with belated paranoia. "Are they poisoned?" I swear, her laugh drives me right up the wall. She grabbed a handful of the grapes and crammed them in her mouth which mostly smothered the laugh, thank Merlin. I started cleaning up my mess so we could get on with our lab assignment. Lily watched me box the leftover ingredients I had prepared. "You think you'll win the Potions award this year?" she asked. "I don't know. I don't really care," I said. I didn't quite get the highest marks in Potions. I could have, but I didn't. The girl who did had a deft hand and great memorization skills, but she was quite happy just following the directions. Poppy was never tempted to fiddle with a recipe, whereas it pissed me off to just blindly follow a book when I already knew I could do it in my sleep and if I just changed some little thing it might maybe... Yeah all right, my occasional classroom improvisations didn't always work, but sometimes they did. Poppy is a drone and I'm an artist. If the idiots who run this school weren't going to give the award to me then it was an empty honour anyway. I poured my experiments for the day down the sink and started scrubbing the cauldrons. Lily was still watching me. She said, "You're going to continue with Potions after you leave school." It was not quite a question and it made me laugh. "Yeah," I said, grinning. It was like asking me if I was planning on doing any breathing later. "Of course." "You're lucky. I still don't know what I want to do," she said sadly. I stood there with my hands in the sink, looking at her out of the corner of my eye. Lily was my partner in Potions by default. Despite the extra points I pulled in for whoever got partnered with me, no one else was willing to put up with my experimenting that led to occasional eruptions and frequent cauldron meltings. And I did rather appreciate having a partner who didn't complain about what I just couldn't help doing. And she'd been my partner now for years. I said, "I bet you do know what you want to do, but it's just so bizarre that you won't tell anyone what it is." She flushed a violent pink that clashed rather badly with her hair. "Ha. You may as well just tell me. It can't possibly be any worse than being a sticky little Potions geek." She looked at her feet. "I want to be a Quidditch coach," she said. "Like Miss Hooch!? Merlin! No wonder you won't tell anyone!" She looked rueful. "I told James. He said it'd be a waste, that I ought to be an Auror or something. But I think I'd make a great Quidditch coach. Or even a Quidditch commentator." "Well, hell must be freezing over right now, but I have to agree with Potter. You'd make a great Auror." Her brows came together. "It's so weird that you and James don't understand. I mean, you both play. Why can't you see the attraction of a job that has something to do with our favorite sport?" "Quidditch is not my favorite sport," I said and went back to scrubbing the cauldrons. "What is? Cricket? Baseball?" she asked. I think she's trying to change the subject, poor girl. I cocked my head at her. "What's baseball?" "You're failing Muggle Studies again, aren't you." "I am not!" Bloody hell. One failing mark back in second year and the reputation sticks with you for the rest of your life. "So, what is your favorite sport? Give me a clue," said Lily. "Um.....Well, I've done six years of summer camp at Durmstrang." She wrinkled her nose at me. "You call that a clue?" "Forget Muggle Studies. You must be failing History of Magic. They only have one sport at Durmstrang. Well, besides ubiquitous Quidditch..." "Are you any good?" she asked. I looked down my nose at her. "What do you think?" And then some other students came in to do their Potions labwork and Lily and I stopped wasting time talking and actually did our labwork, too..... | 