Chapter 18: Of Politics and Boys


There was no sign of Mr. Longbottom throughout the remainder of winter and into early spring, and although everyone did their best to keep Frank's spirits up, the strain that he was under became increasingly obvious. Already a skinny boy, he had lost weight, and there were dark circles under his eyes that made it clear he wasn't sleeping well. It was often a toss-up as to who looked sicker, Lupin or Frank, and although the girls encouraged both to see Madam Pomphrey, neither did. Frank had always been soft-spoken, but before Christmas break, he had never really hesitated to get involved in conversations that he found interesting, and he always had a quick smile. Now, although he was actively involved in their quest to discover the purpose of the book, and therefore why his dad was needed by the dark witches and wizards who had stolen it, he had distanced himself from all of his friends, never joining in the conversation unless he couldn't avoid it, and a smile from him became a rare treasure. Lily, Alice and Amelia were at a loss as to what to do for him. This morning, for example, he sat at the far end of the table, and when they'd asked if they could sit with him, he'd politely explained that he'd much rather be alone when the now-daily letter from his mother arrived.

They didn't want to intrude, and so they found a seat halfway down the table. They'd spent a considerable amount of time thinking of ways to cheer him up, but short of casting a cheering charm, they had all run out of ideas. After getting caught looking at him on several occasions, they'd changed the subject, and Alice was now enthusiastically explaining the properties of Mugwort to Lily. Although they were having a test over said plant today, Lily was finding it hard to concentrate on Herbology so early in the morning, and kept gazing around the table. She suppressed a giggle when she noticed that Amelia once again had her head buried in the newspaper.

Determined to stay aware of any dark happenings that might give them a clue as to what the dark wizard was planning, Amelia had taken out her own subscription to the Daily Prophet after having gotten tired of scouring the castle every day for someone else's discarded paper. She read it faithfully every morning at breakfast, but there was never anything other than the usual stories about fires, reports of Ministry inefficiencies, and calls for pure-blood protections and rallies for muggle-born rights from both sides of the blood conflict. Certainly the Daily Prophet never reported anything to suggest that dark magic was about to destroy the peace that Dumbledore and his aurors had secured for the wizarding world twenty-one years before. This morning was no different, however just as Alice finished up an explanation of the use of the Mugwort in sleeping draughts, Amelia launched into a loud condemnation of a particularly vicious editorial by a pure-blood supporter. "Nutters, all of them!" she exclaimed, folding up the paper and slamming it down so hard that her water spilled. "We'd be extinct if it weren't for muggle-borns, and there wouldn't be any of them here to argue about it. Just doesn't make sense."

She continued to rant on in this vein, and Lily and Alice exchanged amused glances. Amelia's morning ranting had become routine by this point, and they had long-since learned that the quickest way to calm Amelia was to nod quietly and let her rant. At the moment, Amelia was in the middle of a complaint about most students' apathy toward important issues such as blood-discrimination because after all, although public opinion currently protected their rights, if it were to change, most students, including Lily and Alice, could lose even the freedom to study magic at Hogwarts. Although Lily conceded that Amelia had a point whenever she reminded them of this (which was almost every morning), she couldn't help but feel that the unknown dark wizard who was holding Frank's dad hostage was a much greater threat to them. After all, as long as much of the wizarding world was in agreement that muggle-borns should be treated no differently than pure-bloods, nutters like the one in today's paper would remain nothing more than an annoying reminder of the discrimination that divided their society.

"You and Alice should be reading these every day, you know!" Amelia was now lecturing. Lily heaved a sigh, and hoped desperately that the end of the lecture was in sight. No such luck. "As future participants in the wizarding government we have an obligation to stay in— ,"

"We get it already, Amelia!" Alice finally interrupted, smiling sweetly. "But Lily and I don't actually need to read the entire paper to stay informed of current events, as you do such a nice job going over them every morning for us!"

Amelia blushed a little. "I'm sorry," she said, "but it just bothers me that—,"

"We know it bothers you," Lily said soothingly. "And it bothers us, too. Don't forget, it's Alice and I they're talking about when they say 'dirty blood'. But you can't let them bother you, Amelia, wasn't it you who told me that in the first place?  Every society has it's lunatics that think they're better than everyone else for one reason or another. The good news is they aren't being shy about announcing their agenda, so they're never going to get into power. I mean, can you honestly see most of Britain's witches and wizards electing nutters like him to the wizengamot? I think the dark wizard Malfoy's working for is a much bigger threat," she added.

Amelia and Alice both looked piercingly at Lily for a moment. "You don't understand, Lily," Amelia said. "Every dark wizard in recorded history has been a blood-purist. And with the pure-blood movement gaining momentum as of late, now is the perfect time for this dark wizard to recruit supporters."

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The Gryffindors had Potions that morning with the Slytherins, so after breakfast, they made their way quickly down to the dungeon that was their Potions classroom. Apparently Kaylie was sick that day, so Lily was spared the annoyance of listening to her giggle insanely at whatever it was that Potter happened to be saying.

"I hate to say it mate," Black said as they queued up in line behind the girls, "but I'm rather glad that Kaylie's sick today. Her giggling gives me a headache." Lily grinned. Apparently she wasn't the only one, she thought to herself, feeling rather good-natured toward Sirius Black for once. Potter glared at Black, his eyes glinting, and then jumped on him and the two began wrestling in the hallway.

"That's my girl you're talking about, mate!" Potter said, grabbing Black's arm and twisting it behind him.

"Not the one you really want!" Black retorted, twisting out and then spearing Potter and knocking him to the ground. Potter scrambled up and the two boys stood staring at each other, breathing heavily. Black's hair fell into his face while Potter's was now sticking up in every direction. Both were grinning widely.

"Keep your mouth shut, Siri, or I'll shut it for you!" Potter said, reaching for his wand.

Pettigrew turned to Lupin. "A knut says Potter ends up in the hospital wing after this," he said.

"I'll take Black," Lupin replied mildly, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. "Make it a sickle and you're on."

Pettigrew nodded and also leaned against the wall, watching.

"You know you can't beat me in a duel, Jamesy!" Black said pulling his wand out and laughing.

Potter pointed his wand at Black and said the incantatntion for the silencing charm, jabbing his wand toward Black as he did so. Unfortunately, Charms was not Potter's best subject, and they hadn't yet studied silencing charms in class. Lily cringed as she watched. His wand movement was all wrong, and he had mispronounced—

Black's laugh was suddenly silenced. Unfortunately, this was not due to the silencing charm's success. It was due, instead, to the fact that his tongue was now wriggling around in his mouth. Potter had said "serpensio" instead of "silencio", effectively charming Black's tongue into acting like a snake. Lily recognized the incantation—yet again one that she had run across in her quest for language charms—but didn't know the countercharm. The three boys burst into laughter at the look of bewilderment on Black's face.

Lily stepped forward. "He needs to get to Madam Pomphrey," she said angrily. "Or do none of you care that he could choke?"

"Relax Evans, I'll take care of him," Potter said, glaring at Lily furiously as he grabbed Black's sleeve and pulled him toward the stairs.

Lupin was still laughing. "I guess I'd better go along and make sure James doesn't kill him on the way," he said to Pettigrew. "He probably said the incantation wrong on purpose. I don't know what Sirius expected, though. I mean, we're all tired of hearing about it but…," Lupin paused and looked oddly at the three girls. "Well come on, Petey. You'll have to help me make peace!" Lupin and Pettigrew both bent down to pick up their bags. "That's another sickle you owe me."

Pettigrew sighed heavily. "It'll have to wait until after class. I don't have any with me." They disappeared up the steps after Potter and Black.

"So Potter doesn't even really like Kaylie?" Lily said to Alice and Amelia in bewilderment. "I wonder why he's going out with her, then?"

The door to the classroom opened, and they filed in as Professor Figg disappeared into her office. "You can't really be that clueless, can you, Lily?" Alice asked with a laugh. Lily looked at her blankly. Alice giggled. "Okay, maybe you can. I guess boys just haven't crossed your radar yet. He's going out with her to make the girl he really likes jealous."

"Well that's just wrong!" Lily said indignantly. "I mean Kaylie really likes him!" Lily slammed her Potions book on the desk and began setting up her cauldron. "He shouldn't be using her like that! Kaylie could end up getting hurt!"

"I wouldn't worry too much about that," a new voice cut in. Lily looked up to find Desdamona putting her supplies down on the desk next to Lily's. "James isn't the one that Kaylie's really interested in, either. She's trying to make, er… someone else jealous, too."

Lily gaped at her. "Really?"

Desdamona nodded. "Yeah, but it's not working for her, either."

"Either? It's not working for Potter?" she asked, curious now. She had never really put any thought into boys, or relationships, or anything of that nature, and she was quite disturbed by the deception involved. It all seemed entirely too complex for her. I mean, if you liked someone, why not just come right out and tell them? "Well, it still doesn't make sense to me why you'd date someone just to get another person's attention. I mean if you like a person, just go up to them and tell them. Why play games?"

Alice laughed. "Well of course it doesn't make sense to you, Lil!" she said. "But then, you haven't found a boy you're interested in yet, either."

Lily blushed a little, but what Alice had said was true. She just didn't see what was so interesting about boys in the first place, particularly the ones in their class, who acted like idiots most of the time. Of all the boys that she knew, Frank and Lupin were about the only two that she'd ever want to spend any time alone with, and the thought of kissing either of them… She wrinkled her nose. Actually, she didn't particularly see what was so exciting about kissing boys, period. It seemed very…messy. Lily shrugged. "I guess you're right," she said finally. "I mean, it doesn't really seem like it's worth the hassle right now."

Desdamona nodded. "I couldn't agree with you more, Lily," she said. "It's all Kaylie talks about, but personally, I'd much rather be out playing Quidditch than inside trying to figure out why some stupid boy hasn't noticed that I'm wearing my hair differently."

Amelia blushed. "I can understand where Kaylie's coming from," she said wistfully. "I wore my hair down the other day, thinking I'd look extra nice for him and he didn't even glance twice at me."

Lily grinned. She was quite familiar with Amelia's angst over Remus Lupin, and she also knew that he found Amelia quite as interesting as Amelia found him. In fact, she'd caught Lupin staring at Amelia in History of Magic on the day that Amelia was referring to, but Amelia was so torn up about the injustice of the banishment of the Vampires that she hadn't noticed. The problem with those two is that they were both entirely too shy to say anything to one another, and Amelia steadfastly refused to believe either Alice or Lily whenever they tried to tell her that Remus returned her affection.

"Cauldrons away!"Professor Figg called out, sweeping energetically into the room and smiling as everyone groaned and began to move their cauldrons off their desks. "Today we will be learning about potions that are brewed as one element of more complex magical ceremonies. This year, we will be learning about a very simple rain ceremony…"

Lily picked up her quill and began copying down notes.