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Chapter 4: When He Was Bad
James didn't see Snape or Sirius again for any of their other classes. Apparently the school nurse hadn't been able to solve their little problem. But James didn't have too much time to be pleased with himself, because Remus hurried him from one class to another. He was very glad that Remus seemed to have an amazing sense of direction, because he, James, would have gotten lost in the huge castle for several times.
After their last class of the day, Charms, they returned to the common room. James would have liked to sneak out to the Quidditch field and borrow a school broom, but the downpour of rain outside didn't look too inviting. Instead he had accepted Remus' challenge in wizarding chess.
Two hours later they still hadn't finished their first game. It was James turn and on examining the board closely, he noticed that Remus was about to take his queen. Desperately he tried to find a way to save her but every move seemed to endanger his king instead.
"How did you like the Charms?" asked Remus. "Professor Flitwick seems to be a very good teacher. I mean he definitely knows what he's talking about."
"Yeah, he does, but it is kind of hard to take him entirely serious. He is a nice man, no doubt, but he doesn't strike me as an authority figure. I think his classes will be fun and not too hard. But what do you make of Professor Palmer? I really can't make her out. She seems to know an awful lot about her stuff, but on the other hand she doesn't seem to notice much about what's going on around her."
"Oh, I think she did notice, if you meant that sticking solution on the parchment. But I don't know why she didn't tell you off. I guess we will have to wait a little before we find out what her deal is," said Remus.
"Maybe she just doesn't like Snape and Black either. The way Snape hexed her right in front of the class, that would make everybody angry," laughed James in reply.
"But she didn't seem angry. And she asked him to protect himself. Do you want to practise that blocking spell later?" said Remus.
"What? Oh, hmm," replied James distracted.
He was staring at his hopeless situation on the chessboard again. He concentrated hard; a thin frown line appeared on his forehead.
Suddenly the portrait hole swung open and he got distracted. Sirius entered the common room and marched straight up to him. Something green and slimy covered his arms and the front of his robes.
He looked like he was about to explode.
"That was you," he said furiously.
"Prove it," James smiled like he didn't have a care in the world.
Sirius just stood there, staring at James in disbelieve.
"You call my family evil? None of them would have come up with something vicious like that," he cried, before stomping off towards the dormitory stairs, probably to get the slime off himself.
"I really didn't do that," laughed James. "What is that slime?"
Remus had been watching their intercourse silently. Sirius' appearance had been slightly amusing to him, although Remus couldn't understand why James disliked him so much. Remus had been talking to Sirius only shortly during breakfast and he had seemed to be a nice enough boy. That was until Sirius had received the howler from his mother. Afterwards, Sirius hadn't been that talkative anymore.
Remus felt quite sorry for Sirius. He could still remember the day his own father had turned from him. Two months later he had left the family because he couldn't stand his son being what he was. All that had happened a few years ago, but Remus still felt the pain that his father's reaction had left in him. To his father it hadn't mattered that Remus wasn't in the least to blame.
Sirius wasn't to blame for being in Gryffindor either. Remus would have liked to talk to Sirius again, but he had seemed unapproachable after that howler.
Remus snapped back to reality when James finally burst out laughing hard. Apparently he had tried to suppress it until Sirius was out of earshot.
"Did you see his face?" asked James, giggling madly.
Remus raised an eyebrow at James. In his opinion the sticking solution had been a very mean joke, but Remus didn't dare voice it aloud. James was the first friend he might have in years and he wasn't going to jeopardize that so quickly.
"You are aware that Snape and Sirius didn't even make it to the Entrance Hall before they started cursing each other, aren't you? I think Sirius had sprouted antlers and Snape was tap-dancing to the rhythm of his hiccoughs before they reached the infirmary. I heard some third years talk about it," Remus said.
James almost toppled over with laughter.
"Great," he grinned. "But it's a pity that they are just first years and don't know any dangerous curses."
James leaned back relaxed. It seemed that with his revenge he had gotten what he wanted and didn't think about any revenge that his victims could be planning. Remus wasn't as shortsighted and realized that James had probably started a war without realizing it. He smiled at his friend's naivety.
"Don't worry about that. You'll be the first one to know when they learn any new curses, because you kind of attached a target to your chest today. Once Snape and Sirius are done cursing each other, they will be after your blood," said Remus.
James face fell and he swallowed at the thought of what any of the two could be planning to get back on him.
"Well as long as I'm not glued to one of them it's alright I guess," he said, but sounded unconvinced.
Still thinking about what had happened, James didn't notice Remus stealing one of James' pawns from the chessboard secretly. It would have been James' last chance to avoid defeat.
The next day, James kept in mind what Remus had said about pinning a target to his chest. He tried to keep a close watch on all sudden movements Sirius made, always expecting an attack.
Nothing extraordinary happened during their first class, which happened to be History of Magic. Nothing if you didn't count the incident that occurred at the start of the lesson and didn't involve either James or Sirius. It just involved a small mousy haired boy who screamed in fright as he realized that a ghost would teach this lesson.
James had a fleeting impression of the boy turning very pale during the sorting ceremony when the ghosts had entered the Great Hall. But he had not been paying close attention to the boy then and he was preoccupied now too. The fact that Sirius seemed to ignore him unnerved James more than he wanted to admit to himself.
The next lesson of the day happened to be Transfiguration, the subject James had been looking forward to most, besides Defence Against The Dark Arts. Mr. Ollivander had been telling James that his wand was especially good for transfiguration work and James soon found that he was quite talented. He was very well able to turn a match into a needle like the strict Professor McGonagall had instructed them to do.
James had forgotten all about Sirius and examined the perfect point of his needle when, oddly enough, it started to move. First it just rolled over on the desktop, but then it suddenly left the table and floated in midair. James looked perplexed and reached out for the needle to put it back onto his desk. He pulled his hand back quickly as the needle pinched him. James wouldn't have minded so much but the next moment the needle's movement involved trying to pinch his face. While warding it off and receiving another pinch in the hand James spotted the source of the needle's misbehaviour. It was Sirius Black who sat a few desks away and was pointing his wand at James' freshly transfigured match.
'If he can do that, I can,' James thought and used the spell Professor Flitwick had showed them the previous day to levitate the needle that lay in front of Sirius. Within a few seconds a needle fight (imagine a sword fight with two swords that float in midair and are the size of needles) had started on top of the head of a blonde Ravenclaw boy, who had unwisely taken the seat between the two fighters.
Everybody else was concentrating very hard on transfiguring their matches, without success and Professor McGonagall was patrolling the front desks to correct wand movements and the pronunciation of spells, so the little fight went unnoticed and the two needles were free to maim and mangle their masters as they wished.
James spotted a weak spot in Sirius' defence and took the opportunity at once. A sharp jerk of his wand caused one needle to dodge the other abruptly, made it swerve left and aim straight for Sirius' wand hand. Sirius noticed it in time and pulled his hand out of the way so that his wand broke contact with the needle he had been bewitching. The needle fell and landed in the back of the Ravenclaw's hand.
"Ouch," screamed the boy.
Within a heartbeat, Professor McGonagall was next to him.
"What is going on here?" she asked in a voice that could have turned steam to ice in an instant.
Her hawk-like eyes spotted the source of the commotion and wandered over the faces of the nearby students. Neither James nor Sirius had the time or presence of mind to wipe the expression of guilt from their faces that had taken residence there, before Professor McGonagall met them. Her face seemed to consist only of two angry eyes and a very thin line where one would usually look for the mouth.
James gulped.
Later that day, when James thought about his first ever Transfiguration lesson several things wormed him. The first one was that Professor McGonagall had given Sirius and him two evenings of detention and an enormous amount of homework, which would prevent him from sneaking to the Quidditch pitch for at least a week.
He drew two very important conclusions from this incident.
One: He should avoid causing trouble under McGonagall's nose at all costs in future.
Two: He should try to improve his expression of puzzled innocence (which had been the success of many years of hard work) in case number one failed.
The other thing that bothered James about the lesson was that Sirius had not only transformed his match as well as James had done, but that he had also been able to perform the levitation charm although he had missed Professor Flitwick's class yesterday. That proved Sirius to be quite intelligent and James wasn't sure whether to should be angry that he, James, wasn't the best or whether he should be happy that he had found an equal opponent.
Remembering his transfiguration homework, he decided to be angry with Sirius.
James and Sirius stayed in the Great Hall after everybody else had left. Argus Filch, the Hogwarts caretaker, entered with two buckets of water and an assortment of sponges and dusters. Then he started to lecture them. None of the boys paid close attention to him, so they just heard words like 'rule-breakers', 'filthy students' or 'hang by their ankles'.
When Filch left the hall and each of the boys was armed with mops and sponges they started work. James picked the left side of the hall, while Sirius walked off to the right side.
James just never had realized how messy it looked in here after dinner. Bits of food, mud and puddles of various beverages covered the floor. Sighing James started mopping the floor at top speed. Next time he had to do detention in the great hall he would be very careful not to spill anything. Due to the sheer size of the hall they would probably be in here all night.
After an hour of cleaning and not talking to each other, James finally got tired of the silence. He looked over at Sirius who seemed to be particularly grouchy this evening and hadn't spoken a word since entering the great hall.
Thinking hard about what to say, James tried to start a conversation that wouldn't end with one of them yelling at the other.
"You're awfully quiet today," was his brilliant approach.
Sirius looked up, startled.
"Like you care," he said annoyed.
Taken aback, James switched to defense modus.
"Oh, I'm sorry to bother you," he snapped.
"I was just thinking," answered Sirius, slightly guilty.
He looked at James from the side. Was it possible that he really just had wanted to start a conversation?
James didn't notice.
"Must hurt," he said under his breath and turned away.
Sirius' face darkened.
"I'm done over here," he said, picked up his bucket and started towards the door, deliberately dripping water everywhere.
"Hey, I've just cleaned that up. Wait and wipe that away," yelled James angrily.
"Uuups. Sorry," said Sirius without turning around.
"Come back here."
When Sirius kept on walking, James grabbed his dirty sponge and threw it at Sirius. It hit him squarely in the neck.
"Bad mistake," he said quietly, before turning around and throwing his own sponge back at James.
James dodged it in time and threw another wet sponge at Sirius, soaking his robes.
"You asked for it," said Sirius, grabbed his own bucket and emptied the contents on James' head.
Thus started a water fight, which flooded the great hall, and secured them another detention for the next day.
„Three detentions the first week of school. This must be a new record," stated Sirius, who was soaked through by now.