Chapter 3: An Interlude of Pointless Bickering
September 1st rolled around soon enough, and Lily and James were both a little nervous about teaching their first classes. The two of them stubbornly refused to admit this anxiety to each other, however, and instead took out the frustration it caused in frequent arguments. Several times, the other professors had to take a hand in separating the two, and those that had had the two as students while they were at Hogwarts shook their heads sadly over the miserable state of affairs.
One such argument was going on over breakfast in the Great Hall the morning of September 1st, founded completely on nothing. It seemed that a simple request to "pass the marmalade" had expanded into something much larger, involving death threats and spilled pumpkin juice. The two new professors looked about ready to start throwing their bacon at each other, and would indeed have begun a food fight—Lily was already reaching for her plate, while James was still holding a spoonful of eggs—when Dumbledore decided he'd had enough.
"SILENCE!"
The tone of command could not be mistaken, and both Lily and James turned, perturbed, towards its source. Professors or not, in the presence of the headmaster, both of them reverted back to student-mode on reflex.
"In the future, Professor Potter and Professor Evans," he said in a stern voice (the two had insisted on Lily being called by her maiden name, not only because the two of them weren't getting along, but also because two Professor Potters at Hogwarts bespoke too much potential miscommunication), "you will keep your fighting private. I do not want to see either of you putting on such a display for the students to witness, whatever the provocation. You will be civil to each other in their—and the staff's—presence. If you choose to indulge in more outbursts like this one, we will be forced to find new replacements for our Transfiguration and Charms professors without delay. Is this understood?"
The two of them hung their heads and nodded sullenly. If either of them had looked up at that moment, they would have seen Dumbledore's eyes crinkling up in barely suppressed laughter. Instead, the two of them sat back down to breakfast without raising their eyes once.
The rest of the day progressed in relative peace. Lily and James made a tacit agreement to confine their arguments to their lounge area. After thinking it over, both of them had realized that having fights in the presence of the rest of the faculty not only disturbed the peace but gave Snape an opportunity to smirk over their marriage problems…and who wanted to give Snape something to be happy about?
That evening, the students arrived and assembled in the Great Hall for the welcoming feast. As the familiar sorting process began, Lily and James sat with the rest of the staff watching. Dumbledore introduced them as the temporary Transfiguration and Charms professors, to which announcement the students began whispering amongst themselves. The teachers could plainly hear: "Weren't they Head Boy and Girl a few years ago?," "They look awfully young…how much d'you think we'll be able to get away with in their classes?," and giggles from some of the more brainless girls as they looked at the young Professor Potter.
("Brainless twits," grumbled Lily, who was glaring at the girls. She had a sudden wild impulse to hex them so their hair stood straight up, but stopped herself from grabbing her wand just in time. Instead, she started thinking up ways she could torment them in class.)
The more pompous-looking older boys were giving Professor Evans once-overs, tilting their heads speculatively. Several attempted to wink at her, but she didn't notice.
("Damn wankers," James thought violently, memorizing the faces of those who were giving Lily lewd looks. He had to restrain himself from jumping up and knocking some over straight away, and made a mental note to put them on the spot in class.)
"I'm not being jealous," both thought at the same time, "it's just that students are here to learn about magic, not moon after professors."
Dumbledore also introduced a new Divination teacher—someone named Sybil Trelawney, who did not deign to show up for the welcoming feast until the very end, when the students were about to leave for the dormitories. She floated into the Great Hall like a large, glittering wasp, and her disembodied voice ("I'm sorry I am late, but the Inner Eye was clouded earlier this evening, throwing me into great confusion.") frightened some of the students so much that the prefects had a time of it getting all those who had fainted or gone into hysterics to the hospital wing.
"Rather strange turn of events, isn't it?" the Fat Friar, Hufflepuff ghost, said to Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost. "Usually we're the ones who scare the students. Or Peeves. But I suppose we've been outdone, now."
"Who'd have thought Hogwarts would one day have a professor who would be more frightening than a ghost?" Nearly Headless Nick replied, looking a bit surprised, his head hanging sideways off his neck.
The Gray Lady, ghost of Ravenclaw, added curiously, "But really, she nearly frightens me. Looks like a big insect, that one does." The three ghosts nodded, watching Trelawney drift through the students, who were avoiding her like the plague. "And I think she's a phony. 'Inner Eye,' indeed! I sense no divining aura whatsoever."
The Bloody Baron, Slytherin ghost, did not make a reply. He just stared blankly (and a bit scornfully) at Trelawney as she settled herself at the staff table with a great jangling of bracelets.
Classes began the next day. James found himself having fun, for the most part, except for the times he had to deal with the more unruly students. The prank-playing set was funny, he had to admit, but pranks weren't nearly as funny as they had been while he was a student. As a teacher, he was now torn between a desire to laugh uproariously and swap stories with the mischievous ones, or to be stern and give them all detentions for disturbing his class. His indecision basically solved the problem for him—the look on his face as his thoughts wavered was rather horrible, unbeknownst to him, and the students decided to hold off playing serious pranks in Professor Potter's class because the look was just too disturbing to watch continually.
Meanwhile, Lily's students were really beginning to think their new Charms teacher was extraordinarily cool. First off, she pushed the limits of the dress code—she had all the girls imitating her way of tucking the hems of her robes by the end of the second week. The first day of class, when Lily had been showing her first-year students how to do the levitation charm, she'd noticed several of the older boys lurking outside her classroom a bit besottedly. Immediately she called them inside, and while they were still joyfully puzzled at the turn of events (she hadn't even seemed to notice them previously), she used them as examples for the charm and levitated them all above the first-years' heads. They didn't enjoy this too much, but she did, especially since a few of them had been disrupting her class before by trying to distract her through the open door. In fact, Lily enjoyed this so much that she detained them after the first-years' class and used them as examples for the whole rest of the day. Of course, she thanked them and gave them a small talk afterwards, and none of them were any the worse for the wear.
She also delighted some of her trouble-making older years by telling them about some complicated charms work that she and the Marauders had done in school to play pranks on the professors.
"Not that I'm condoning prank-playing," Lily said sternly, her green eyes flickering to the back corner of the room where some of the more unruly girls and boys sat. "Even though my husband was rather expert at it himself." She grinned cheerfully, remembering some of the pranks James had pulled, then frowned as she remembered James, a.k.a. Stupid Git. "And those students who do choose to play pranks despite my warning had better come up with something more creative to be punished for than what I've told them about." She turned back to the blackboard as the students murmured amongst themselves. Aside from the fact that she had practically okay-ed pranks, several were still in shock that Professor Evans was married—she looked so young, just out of Hogwarts or something—while a select few were looking speculatively at Lily's hand, which was devoid of rings, and wondering about her husband.
In one of her worst arguments with James, Lily had angrily taken off her wedding ring and thrown it into the depths of her magical jewelry box. Now she sometimes wore it on a chain around her neck, just so students wouldn't bother her about it (and she wouldn't have to admit that Professor Potter was, indeed, her husband). And sometimes, when she was particularly peeved at James, she would take even that off and leave it in her jewelry box. James, apparently, did not notice its absence from her finger. James himself had lost his ring during Auror training—he'd been shadowing an Auror at an actual raid, and had gotten caught in the crossfire of some pretty powerful curses. The ring had been grazed by a passing spell, and since it had already been a bit loose—James had been losing weight with the pressures of work—it had fallen off. In the ensuing scramble for safety, James hadn't had time to look for its remains. And that was that. Initially Lily had been planning to get him a replacement, but that was around the time when their hostility had begun, so she'd kept putting it off. She'd purchased a ring to give to him on their anniversary, but the gift-giving obviously hadn't happened.
So the first few days of class were comparatively good for both Lily and James. They even went so far as to share some stories about their students with each other and the rest of the staff over the staff table in the Great Hall during meals. The other professors were rather surprised and pleased at the lack of animosity between the two new teachers during the first couple weeks of school; several assumed that this pleasant state would last through the rest of the year…
They assumed too early.
It was the third week of school when James and Lily had their first big brawl. They had, of course, been confining any small tiffs they had to their lounge. This time, though, they were so infuriated at one another that several students and a couple passing teachers witnessed a rather strange hexing display in the corridor outside the couple's living quarters. Lily's shrieks and James's yelling echoed through the castle as they chased each other down the deserted corridors, both of them with freakish hair colors, strange growths on the skin, and any number of odd appendages and weird quirks. By the time the other professors, who had rushed to the scene to stop the madness (including Snape, but he didn't really help stop the fighting—he'd just come to enjoy the show), had finally taken both of their wands away from them, a small crowd of students had assembled to see what was going on. They were dismissed by Professor Sprout, a young Herbology professor, without having seen much of the action and only knowing that Professors Evans and Potter hated each other for some unknown reason.
By the time Dumbledore showed up on the scene, the two professors were calmed down and rather contrite; they apologized to the rest of the staff and to Dumbledore for the inconvenience and promised anew that they would not lose their tempers in public again. Then they meekly headed back into the lounge and stayed in their rooms for the rest of the day, neither going down to dinner.
It was rather funny for some of the professors, however, to see the ways Lily and James acted like they despised each other, and yet showed that they cared. Several times Lily was seen during her free period furtively creeping around outside James' classroom while he taught. Her eyes were unusually narrow, and if one passed close enough one could hear her hissing furiously about "brainless girls, never do anything besides moon after boys, can't believe they'd go so far as to like a professor, if I could get my hands on them…" Those who heard about it (and not many teachers got close enough to hear her, but word spread among the faculty) laughed about it later, knowing that it was the largely Hufflepuff fan club that James had inspired which elicited Lily's fury.
Not so surprising, then, was the fact that James was seen doing much the same thing as Lily had while she taught during his free period. He would stand outside her door in a spot Lily couldn't see and simply glare at the boys in the class. They found this extremely disconcerting, and nervously attempted to behave themselves, much to their classmates' puzzled surprise. James had had no end of fun watching as Lily levitated the boys on the first day, during which he'd had a tough time keeping his laughter silent. It didn't stop him from keeping those same boys after class various times, however, and giving them painfully tedious detentions to carry out for seemingly harmless pranks.
Both of them still denied being jealous.
While the Potters were involved in their feuding, however, bad news and whispers of dark times returning were traveling around outside Hogwarts. Slowly, the word seeped into the castle, as the Daily Prophet reported several small attacks on muggle families initiated by Death Eaters. They were still being led by a cloaked figure known as "You-Know-Who" to the terrified public, rather than his true name, "Voldemort," which people had ceased to refer to him as while James and Lily were still students at Hogwarts.
Voldemort's attacks had pretty much ceased for the past year, perhaps a little longer. When Lily and James had graduated from Hogwarts and gotten married, they had both been on the path of healing from their losses of their families during their time at school. For some reason, the dark acts had gone on hiatus for a time, and as the months went by without any news of killings or even of distraught muggles, who did not know how to deal with unexpected magical phenomena, those of the wizarding world had been lulled into an odd sense of security. Even Lily and James, who had felt firsthand the impact of Voldemort's power, had begun to believe that perhaps Voldemort had given up after the heightened security precautions everyone had taken in defense. Now, it was obvious that the interlude of peace was false and Voldemort had merely been biding his time, perhaps taking measures to become even more powerful and invincible than before.
Dumbledore must have seen this coming, James and Lily agreed (for once), since he had sent McGonagall and Flitwick on a mission which probably involved finding information about the Dark Order. No one knew where the professors were or what they were doing, but several times Dumbledore received exotic birds rather than owls delivering messages, and his face after he read the notes was always rather grave.
Despite the dark times that seemed to have come, however, James and Lily continued with their hostility. The fights grew to encompass issues like James's and Lily's respective fan clubs, both accusing the other of encouraging the members of said clubs.
"YOU'RE JEALOUS, AREN'T YOU??" shouted James, on one particularly nasty occasion when Lily had been imitating one of the most annoying Hufflepuff girls, who had named herself President of James's fan club. James hated that girl in particular, and had thrown a barrage of unsuccessful and progressively less subtle hints at her to, in short, get a life. Seeing Lily imitate her was rather torturous—not just because they were fighting or because of the girl's annoying behavior that Lily seemed to know so eerily well, but because it was Lily that was acting like a twit. James found it extremely disturbing to see Lily, who normally looked so attractively intelligent, even when fighting with him, look suddenly so stupid.
"ME??? JEALOUS?? HA! HA HA HA, POTTER, YOU WISH!!" Lily yelled back, the "stupid" demeanor gone in a flash. It relieved James, but the next comment made him forget his relief. "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S JEALOUS, JAMES!"
James spluttered, speechless for the moment, and exploded again ("AM NOT!"). And so it continued, until the two of them got so angry that they began chasing each other around the lounge, shouting hexes. The two of them burst out of the portrait-hole, still carrying on, and flew through the corridors, and…well, it's known what happened after that. Thereafter they kept their arguments inside the lounge.
Notes:
This chapter does get a little fluffy, I admit. As you'll see later, the story will gradually shift away from these little fun bits (well, to me they're fun bits. haha.), and move on to more serious matters. Which explains the title of this chapter...yeah, pointless bickering.
The part about the wedding rings might have seemed unnecessary but it does come up again later in a pretty predictable way. You'll see. ^_^
Yay! I got reviews! Everblue3, I've read a lot of reviews by you, too, and I had checked your favorites list previously and found that we read a lot of the same stories. To tell you the truth, I've been reading your fic and bumming around instead of reviewing for them…actually, I think I did review for one of them, but I hadn't gotten around to delurking for the others yet, especially that most recent one that you've been updating. :) I think I found it somewhat intimidating since you always leave these awesome reviews and I really suspect that I'm not as perceptive as you are, but I'll try and be more forthcoming in the future! AND if you have any stories you would particularly recommend, let me know! Thanks so much for reviewing…it made my day!
As for James and his residual frustration…I figured it's just because he was so busy being peeved at Lily that he really didn't take the time to..erm..appreciate…the way she looked. Heh. This will definitely change soon. Maybe sooner than you think…And about the whole Transfig-Charms thing, yes, I like it too…I couldn't escape from it!!
Kirbee- thanks so much for reviewing! I agree…I think it's quite funny when L/J fight when they obviously still care about each other. I used to have a thing for love/hate stories, but I think my sickeningly sappy side is winning out and pushing me towards the ones where they get along all the time. Hm…this could change.
Rosezgarden – thanks to you for reviewing, too! I'm glad you liked the strawberry tarts…personally, my favorite part was when Hagrid spat it into the sink with a "YEEECHHHH!" Haha…okay. :D
My internet connection died, so I've been relying on campus computer labs to get to my fic and whatever else I need online! This is not-so-comfortable in that I happen to like reading fic and email in relative privacy and the labs are always so crowded with people. It also sucks because much of my coursework and class announcements and whatnot is online, and it sucks not being able to check at all times of the day (and night). I've been having a battle royale with AT&T over this whole cable modem issue and at this point they are being extremely prick-ish about the whole thing. GRRR!!!! :O I want my internet!
