Disclaimer: Thank you soooo much to everyone who's reviewed. And a special thanks to Aleese Sundancer, who faithfully beta reads my horrid first drafts – thank you soooooo, soooo much.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
AN: British/American dictionary-
Chucking – hurling, throwing up
Din'ni ken – don't know (Scottish) – already said this in a previous chapter
Higglty-pigglty – in no particular order (not sure which country it's from – or even if it's a word!)
Loo – washroom, toilet etc.
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End of last Chapter"You know how she's always with that slimy Smith person in my house… Snap, Snak, Snake something."
"Snape." I provided.
"That's it. I know for sure that he can brew a love potion… Well, all I can say is… if she had one of those, Kirkcaldy didn't stand a chance."
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Unforgettable, In Every Way Part VII – In Which There is an Interesting SmellSuddenly, something clicked in my mind. It felt like a light bulb had flashed on above my head, proclaiming to the entire world that Lily Evans had just put two and two together and made seven. The genius!
"Are you trying to say…" I trailed off, trying to find something tactful to say that wouldn't betray what I was thinking. Just in case I was off on the wrong track.
"I'm not trying to say anything…" Liz looked at me, a sly grin appearing on her face. "If you accidentally get the impression that Sharon Watson used a certain illegal potion to… shall we say – achieve a certain goal…"
"I might have misunderstood something in our conversation." I now understood where Liz was going with this. "It certainly wouldn't have been your fault that I got that idea…"
"That's the idea, mate." Liz clapped me on the shoulder. I could tell that I would have an impressive bruise there in the morning, in addition to the other ones from when I had unwittingly almost gotten trampled.
"You would have made a great Slytherin… you caught on quick enough. I dare say that Carley would be proud."
"Thanks! How -"
"Kohier transferred to the Wings?! I don't believe it!" Remus' shocked voice carried from the opposite end of the classroom.
"- is Carley anyway?" I continued on, ignoring the interruption. "I tried to visit her in the hospital wing last night, but Madame Giles sent me away with a threat that if I came again within the next twenty-four hours, she would make me scrub the wing from ceiling to floor twice!"
"Oh, don't you know?" Liz looked surprised.
I was beginning to wonder if I was the last to know anything at Hogwarts.
Probably.
"She tried to shrunk herself to 5'6 feet. But…" Here Liz chuckled. "She was shrunk to five inches!"
"Oh my -" In my minds eye I could see Carley, her hands on her hips, glairing up from the desk beside the inkbottle. Carley had short brown hair, and an even shorter temper – she would not have been amused.
Another thought occurred to me. "Liz… try not to take this the wrong way… but if Sharon Watson would resort to illegal potions to get what she wants…"
Liz held up a hand to make me pause while she checked that Wright and Lupin were still otherwise occupied. They could both hear the discussion going on before she continued: "Andres' shot at the goal at about two hours into the game – you remember, before Pablo had smashed that bludger over to –"
"Why wasn't she in Slytherin, you mean?" Liz inquired, literary reading my mind.
"Umm, for want of any other way to say that… yes."
"I dinnae ken…" Liz puzzled over it. "Ravenclaws are supposed to value wit. But I just don't see –"
Tramping could be heard through the halls, coming towards this classroom. The offbeat sound when people are walking quickly, but some legs are shorter than others.
I knew exactly what that felt like - forever jogging to catch up with others.
Liz slowly sat straighter in her chair. The air around her turned frigid - if she got any colder, she would get frost on her nose.
I certainly did not envy the next person who entered.
"What gave you the impression that you could be late for this meeting?" She exploded.
I could see the people in the front quail and attempt to conceal themselves behind others as she stood and started stalking her way towards them.
"There was absolutely, no reason for everyone except four people to – what is that smell?" She looked like she had to resist the impulse to hold her nose.
Her question was greeted with silence, many people still looking stupefied at her yelling and then her quick change of topic.
"It smells like dung bombs." Wright observed from the front of the classroom. He had wisely decided to keep the distance between him and everyone else. But even there, the stench was over powering.
I felt like throwing up, right then and there in front of everyone. I clapped a hand over my mouth, noticing that many of the others had green-tinged faces. But they were resolutely holding it in. Perhaps that's why no one had spoken at first.
"Marauders!" Mathew Melville – the Ravenclaw Perfect – gasped out, trying his hardest to breathe with his mouth and ignore the smell.
I took a leaf from his book and tried breathing through my mouth. It didn't work. The stench was so thick that I could taste it at the back of my throat.
"Just go!" Liz desperately flapped her hands, as if trying to shoo out the smell as well. "Meeting is re-scheduled to a week today. Same time, same place!" She called after the Prefects that were quickly retreating back down the corridor.
I decided to give it a few minutes for the air to clear before making my own way back to Griffindor common room.
"And you!" Liz Oser rounded on Remus who instinctively drew back from the accusing finger. "Detention!"
"What!"
"But he –" I protested.
"But I didn't –"
"Shut up!" Chris Wright roared, stunning us into silence. "Thank you."
"He was with me coming to the meeting!" I blurted out, unable to keep my silence. "And he stayed here until the other Perfects came through the door! He can't have done it!"
"I agree. Innocent until proven guilty." Wright supported.
"Guilty by association!" Liz protested. Determined that Lupin would receive a detention. "And I outrank you!"
Ah, true. Annoyingly true.
"Not me!"
"True, but – "
"And you won't get any tonight if you give him a detention." The Head Boy spoke firmly, determined to have his way.
I think that he enjoyed fighting with Liz so much that he would have disagreed with anything she had said. Even if he thought that the victim deserved it. Did I say victim? I meant subject – of course.
"Fine! I surrender!" Liz gave up, "Lupin won't get detention – but the other Marauders will!"
"I don't have a problem with that. They probably deserve it." Wright motioned with his head that Remus and I should quickly exit the classroom – before Liz changed her mind.
We tiptoed over to the door, took a gulp of clean air and dashed into the hallway. After we had run a few doors down, I hazarded a breath. I didn't die – that was good.
"We can breathe."
Lupin let out a gush of air and gasped for breath, his skin had turned a dull shade of grey.
"By the Five Secrets! That stank!" I exploded, frantically swallowing – trying to rid myself of the taste that resolutely clung to the back of my throat.
"Thanks, by the way, for getting me out of detention."
"Sure, I knew that you couldn't have done that anyway." We continued walking up to the common room, wheezing slightly since we hadn't gotten our breath back.
"Well…" Remus trailed off, a crooked smile on his face. His skin still hadn't turned back to his natural colour. Or had his skin been this colour through the 'meeting'?
I stopped dead on my tracks.
"You didn't! You did! How could you? And I… I… how could you do that to me?" Ideas and half formed sentences tumbled higglty-pigglty out of my mouth.
"It wasn't my fault, you just jumped in!" Remus protested, "But their faces! And how the Head Girl reacted!" He snickered, hiding his smile behind a hand. But one look at the stunned expression on my face set him off.
Again.
"Any way," he explained after he had recovered from his bout of laughing, "The meeting would have gone well into the night and we Marauders have some business tonight that couldn't be rescheduled like the Prefects meeting could."
"I don't want to hear it!"
"What? Why not?"
"Because," I explained to him, "What I don't know, no one will be able to get it out of me. And I wouldn't have to argue with myself whether I should report you or not."
"Password?" The portrait queried as we neared it.
"Lucky-penny."
The portrait swung open to let us in, we walked through, and the Fat Lady closed behind us with no more than the whisper of wood against the thick scarlet carpet.
"The passwords get stranger and stranger, don't they?" Lupin remarked to me. He was still looking a bit sickly, but I decided not to comment on it – not wanting to embarrass him.
"Indeed." I then bade him farewell and proceeded to mount the stairs to my dorm. There I had an unexpected surprise.
"Lily!" Anya - one of my dorm-mates - screamed. She then swayed her way – or attempted to – across the room. "Why are there three of you? Did another of your charms backfire?" She giggled.
"Oh, who is it?" Katriona groaned from her position on the floor. She cradled a half-empty bottle of – I'm not sure what.
"You've been drinking."
"Only a little!" Anya protested as she walked into a chair. I quickly guided her to the nearest bed, which happened to be my own.
"Go on! You 'ave sum." Katriona held up the bottle, spilling more of it onto the floor.
"Howdy girls!"
There, in the doorway to the loo, Laura propped herself against the doorframe. Shampoo, shower gel and who-knows-what-else were all over her robes, but she seemed not to care.
"Hey yall!" She tried her hardest to replicate an American accent, but was sadly off.
She stepped out from the door and minced her way into the room, looking coyly at every table, bed, chair and trunk.
"Ooo, and who do we have here…" She looked me up and down, then winked at me.
Will. Not. Think. About. What. She. Just. Implied! I told myself firmly, wishing that I could run screaming out of the room.
Laura slowly advanced and I shuffled back as quickly as I could. Damn table! I was trapped against it.
I couldn't help but wish that this was not happening! If I curl into a tiny little ball, will I wake up back in my nice, warm bed thinking that this was one bizarre dream?
"Oh look!" Anya shrieked, "I can fly!" She started flapping her arms and running about the dorm.
This is too much for me! My mind screamed.
Anya suddenly grasped the door and threw it open.
"I want to fly off the Astronomy Tower!" She dashed out of the room.
Instinctively, I tore after her. But she fell on the stairs and rolled down them, all the while giggling and saying that she could fly.
I picked my way down the stairs, hopping over the transport stairs. Janet had unwittingly stepped on one last week and been transported to the First Years Slytherin dorm, coming out in hysterics about how much a mess it was, and what they had been doing as she had been transported there. In my first year I had been taken to the Potions classroom, crashing down onto a bubbling cauldron – very hot.
I got to the bottom of the stairs, preparing to see Anya in a heap with her neck broken. But I just caught a glimpse of her robes disappearing out of the portrait hole, off balance Gryffindors in her wake.
"Why did no one stop her!" I exploded. "You!" I pointed a finger at a Fourth Year boy, who's expression looked like he viewed my hand like the hand of God coming to crush him like a Coke can.
"Me?!" He squeaked.
"Get up to the Fifth Year Second Dorm and look after the girls there!" I sprinted for the door.
"But boys can't get up there!"
"I don't care, just think of something!" I ordered over my shoulder as I pelted down the hall, the Fat Lady quickly closing behind me.
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Response to reviews:
Swishy Willow Wand: Griffindor? I suppose if you like it… but I would hate to be compared to Harry Potter all the time. But wouldn't you like to be evil and not a goody-goody all the time? I really like Slythern anyway – suppose I was meant to be sorted into it. Did you know that J. K. Rowling tried the sort and was sorted into Ravenclaw – when she fashioned Griffindor after herself? So I'm not sure if the Official Site can be trusted.. oh well.
Hannah: What else do you think I can do at the boarding house except write? I'll probably calm down since it's the Christmas Break – and I'm going up to Skye where there is NO internet connection! Ahhhhhhh!
Optical Illusions: Yes, I am defiantly in denial about how sane I really am. But most geniuses were a bit more.. um, eccentric than normal people. And who makes the rules for who is eccentric?
Lil Bazza: A Hufflepuff and a Slytherin are going out because the Head Boy and Girl have a shared separate common room and are right next to each other. And not all Slytherins are bad – they just will do anything to get what they want. And Hufflepuffs are loyal. Just because they're in different houses doesn't mean that they can't go out. Sometimes opposites attract.
Winky55: I agree – the last chapter was a bit borring. This one should hopefully be better. Or at the very least the next chapter! Does she say yes? You'll have to keep reading!
Padfoot Hoshi: Lucky you! On holiday! Not fair that you can get internet as well! Where we go on holiday, there isn't even a phone line! I almost go crazy!
A Naughty Mouse: I don't take threats very well – very tempted just to not post this chapter immediately. Bite my head off? That might be slightly tricky. Well I was planning on updating anyway… I just almost had a panic attack when I read your review – it was late at night and I had just watched a program on TV about a murder… and you know what your brain does to you at night. Even your teddy – if you have one that is, and I don't – is part of a conspiracy against you.
Please, please read
And review!
And have a Merry Christmas!
P.S. I'll probably take longer than usual to post updates – Christmas season and all that. And I'm going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with no INTERNET! Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo