Chapter Nine: Essence of Me

Wrapped in Gryffindor scarf, gloves and hat—it was spitting rain and had yet to warm up much from Tuesday—, a crimson-and-gold rosette pinned to my lapel, I hurried down to the Quidditch pitch, eager to find a seat in the stands, so that I could get out of the open air and into the heat of hundreds of other bodies packed together (with the hope that most of my peers had bathed a reasonable amount of time ago, and that the wind would take care of the rest.)

Those who had still been in the Great Hall eating breakfast were just beginning to trickle out through the main doors and I managed to avoid the worst of the arctic, numbing wind by ducking into the crowd and letting the natural laws of physics take their course.

"Tia! Tia Spencer!"

I paused when I heard the breathless voice behind me, and turned in time to see Aubrey jogging towards me, wending through the closely clustered students, her cheeks flushed and her breath coming in white puffs. She was dressed similarly to myself, except she had had the foresight to wear trousers to the match, something I was currently wishing I'd done, as opposed to my skirt and none-too-thick stockings.

"Hi," I said, when she reached me. I was determined not to let her go on thinking I was a snob, no matter what mood I was in, and so I smiled and inquired, "Are you a fan of Quidditch, then?"

"Oh, no!" she said earnestly, then turned a brilliant shade of pink, her already large brown eyes widening in horror at what had just come out of her mouth. "I mean—it's all right, I've just never—I was curious and—well, Lily said… she said you usually come to the games if I wanted to see one," she finished, all in one breath.

I kept a perfectly straight face and merely asked, "Doesn't Lily usually watch the matches too?"

"Yes, I think so," she replied, as we started to walk again, down the sloping lawn towards the stadium. "She said she would go with me, but then… well, I don't know exactly what, but something came up. She had to go meet with Professor McGonagall." She looked up at me with an expression of dawning horror. "You don't think she's in trouble, do you?"

I smiled blandly. "We can only hope, Aubrey dear."

We eventually found Remus and Peter (more accurately, they found us, when Peter stood on his seat and started shouting and waving at us like a maniac) and the four of us got settled to watch the start of the match, the two boys graciously letting us have the middle seats (more accurately, they had no choice, when I elbowed my way through, dragging Aubrey behind me, and plonked the both of us firmly down between them.)

So, yes. Most gracious.

"I'm sorry about your hand," Peter said to me from my left.

"Oh," I exclaimed, in surprise. I'd forgotten about the mild burn on the back of my hand in all the, er… excitement. "S'all right, it doesn't really hurt anymore. Which reminds me—" I leant forward, turning the other way to talk across Aubrey to Remus, "—most aggrieved about your cereal, Remus." I grinned. "I imagine essence of Tia must have really put you off your breakfast."

He gave me a wary look. "Well, it's not as if I ate it afterwards."

I laughed. "Trust me, mate, I'd have been scared if you had."

Peter nudged me with his elbow and gestured none-too-subtlely at Aubrey, who was looking round at the hundreds of students milling around us trying to find a seat, and down at the mud-and-grass pitch, many feet below, onto which any of the players from either team had yet to appear. Peter cleared his throat loudly and mouthed, "Who's that?"

"Oh!" I said again, this time apologetically due to my distinct lack of manners (my dear mummy hadn't failed completely when it came to instilling in her only daughter a sense of propriety—however come-and-go, and sometimes arbitrary, it could be.) "Right, sorry. Blokes, this is Aubrey van Houlton—Aubrey, this is Peter Pettigrew, and this—" I gestured across her lap "—is Remus Lupin."

Aubrey, with a sudden lustful gleam in her eye, smiled lasciviously, leapt onto an equally carnally influenced Remus, and both started eating each other's faces.

Well, no, they didn't really. But my impure nocturnal activities with Sirius had clearly tainted my formerly (ahem) innocent mind, as it seemed that it was now so far in the proverbial gutter, I was picturing my friends together.

Gettin' it awwwwhn.

Oh my God. Horrific mental image of bloke-on-bloke action, by way of Peter and James. Feeding each other grapes. My own cousin! Ohgodohgodohgod. Get out of my head—OUT!

I knocked the heels of both hands against my forehead in desperation, attempting to rid myself of such an upsetting notion, but only succeeded in alarming Aubrey, who stared at me in concern and asked if I was feeling ill.

"Completely nauseated," I groaned in reply, scrubbing at my—permanently scarred, I was sure—eyes with my fingertips. Positively queasy. Decidedly unwell. Downright nasty.

Okay. Okay. Wrong choice of words.

"Do you need to go to the hospital wing?" asked Remus, getting into to it now too.

"I need to have my memory Obliviated," I responded, wincing as several of the choicer scenes of that disturbing little montage wiggled their way back into the forefront of my mind. I shook my head furiously, as if hoping to rattle the memories loose, and hopefully have them fall out of my ears and onto the ground, where I could then stomp them into dust, incinerate what was left, scatter the ashes to the four winds, and never, never think of it again.

I'd pictured James in the buff. And for reasons completely unfathomable by my own pathetic mortal knowledge, he'd had Neil Whittaker's pasty-arse body. Neil Whittaker! I'd never even seen him naked!

Oh, in the name of all things pure and holy. I needed a distraction. Right now.

Quite luckily, Ravenclaw's team chose that moment to fly out onto the pitch, and I gratefully and determinedly focused my attention on the thorough and somewhat vulgar verbal bashing Peter was giving Andrew McPherson—finding myself wholly unable to directly meet the former boy's eyes, having so evilly violated him in my head mere moments ago. I wondered if I'd ever be able to look at him the same way again.

And James… I couldn't even think about James right now. I was so terrified that he would just know. And he would, too; somehow, he would. He was just Like That.

"Tia—I understand the whole melodramatic thing, it's all in good fun, after all—but when you get that gleam in your eye, like you're being possessed by a twitchy little animal… well, let me just say, you're very creepy."

I cast an angry, half-desperate look at Remus. "Creepy? The movie 'Psycho' was creepy. This—me—isn't creepy. This is me freaking out and possibly going a tad hysterical from what you just made me see in my head, all because you and Aubrey can't keep your hands off each other!"

Remus and Aubrey actually leapt away from one another like two leaping things, the former looking genuinely confused and also a bit scandalised; the latter looking absolutely mortified and quite pink.

Peter said, unhelpfully, "What are you talking about? You never saw 'Psycho'—you said you were too buggered by Sirius making that shower-scene noise every time you said you were going to take a bath, you couldn't watch it."

I glared at him, as if to say, "Not the point, Peter."

He continued to stare at me in innocent bemusement.

At that moment, I felt a sort of breeze on my face and the scant inch of exposed skin on my neck, which wouldn't have bothered me as there was fucking wind everywhere, except that it was oddly warm and smelled faintly of peppermint and leather.

I noticed Peter's abruptly astounded expression as he gazed, gape-jawed, at something over my shoulder and my head swung round.

Sirius floated mid-air about two feet away from me, up above myself and the rest of us sitting in the stands, so as to avoid kicking those in the seats in front of me in the heads, in full scarlet Quidditch regalia, and leaning forward with negligent elegance on the upper portion of his sleek broom-handle. His own expression was one of grim determination.

This did not bode well.

Before I could even open my mouth to say anything—though I really had no idea what I would have said, given the chance—he held up a gloved hand, closed his eyes wincingly as if it pained him to even ponder his next words, and said, dramatically, "Alas, Mam'selle Spencer, I can see your vicious feelings towards me have not changed since thirty minutes ago. I had hoped that time would make you see reason, but…" He trailed off meaningfully, opening his eyes and resting his now-fisted hand against his chest in an all-suffering manner.

As if a bloody fucking half-hour was sufficient, to make me forget how completely insensitive he'd been! Honestly, you'd think he believed me to be reasonable or something.

Wanker.

I was about to open my mouth again, having a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to say to him now, but he cut across me a second time.

"'Tis a sad thing that a man can no longer be accepted unconditionally to his lady-love's hearth. Sadder still when it is her bedchamber."

My mouth dropped open. There were at least seventy-eight people in the immediate vicinity who had heard him say that. And some of them were gaping at me, now.

Wanker!

He was already going full-speed ahead into his next little overdramatic speech.

"I have, then, a token for you to hold close and dear to your heart whilst I, noble gentleman that I am, go into battle to fight for your wronged honour. Will you, most gracious gentlewoman that you are, accept this symbol of my undying adoration?"

I could only stare. I honestly hadn't a single coherent thought going through my head at that moment, besides perhaps the steady mental chant of 'ohgodohgodohgodohgod…'

This was not turning out to be my day.

To my shock, I felt someone nudge me rather insistently in the ribs and I looked over dazedly to see Aubrey gesturing with surprising fervour to hold out my hand. Her eyes, large as ever, were oddly shiny.

I did hold out my hand, stupidly and without a word, and Sirius sent me a beaming smile, extracting something black-and-white from the collar of his Quidditch robes.

He stuffed this firmly into my outstretched hand, hovered dangerously low on his broomstick so that the hems of his robes flapped into the faces of the girl and bloke sitting in front of me, and dropped a kiss on my hat-covered head.

Then he shot straight up in the air, whirled round, and took off for the center of the pitch where both Ravenclaw's and Gryffindor's teams had now congregated.

I stared after him, looking quite gormless I was sure, with my mouth hanging halfway open and my eyes nearly as wide as Aubrey's.

"Well, what is it?" Peter hissed curiously, nudging me also.

I looked down at the small bundle of what felt like silk and something about the bunched up material in my fist struck a familiar chord in my mind. I opened my fingers and let it spill out onto my lap.

Aubrey let out a scandalised gasp.

The little black patches over a background of white silk were tiny paw-prints. And the "token" itself was what I knew to be Sirius' treasured favourite pair of skivvies.

"He gave you his boxers?" Remus burst out, looking as though he was struggling to decide whether he wanted to start handing out detentions, or laugh his sexy arse off.

"He loves those boxers," Peter said weakly.

It was Remus' turn to send him a stern 'Not the point, Peter' look.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it—Mr. Locksley, Hogwarts' flying instructor, blew his whistle to signal the start of the match and we all turned to watch the game; me, with Sirius' boxers clutched possessively, if not bemusedly, in my lap. I wasn't sure what he meant by it, but I decided to take it for what it was worth—an olive branch of sorts, and a very odd gift, one that was nevertheless very thoughtful when you considered who the giver of the gift had been.

I didn't have much time to dwell on Sirius beyond his performance on the pitch, as Aubrey, a complete Quidditch novice, had to have the whole game explained to her as we watched. It was a full-time job, one I didn't particularly mind, as by the time we were an hour into the match and she had a decent grasp of the rules and basic outlines of the game, she was cheering and booing as loudly as the rest of us.

Myself, I got caught up in the Quidditch hype and hysteria as well, so that by that time I had not only shouted myself hoarse, but had completely forgotten my embarrassment and was standing on my seat and waving Sirius' boxers madly, like a kind of flag. James had just made a spectacular goal and was performing a celebratory loop-the-loop on his broomstick.

"I love you, Potter, and will proudly have your babies!" someone called gleefully in the midst of all the ruckus.

I suspected Sirius.

Ravenclaw was forty points behind Gryffindor, whose standing score was one-hundred-and-twenty, and it was easy to see that both teams' players were getting tired. Our Keeper, Alix Branstone, had missed a fairly easy save a moment ago, while their Beaters were lagging behind, rarely reaching either Bludger before Sirius or our other Beater, Trina Catheway (who, by the way, was a fucking machine!). I doubted the chilly, blustery, wet weather was helping much, either. The wind was being a real pain in our collective arse.

Play resumed almost immediately after James' goal and I plunked back down into my seat, pulling Aubrey back down with me.

I scooted forward when I saw the Quaffle get snatched up by Andrew McPherson himself, who started toward out end of the pitch, dodging Bludgers and other players, his fellow Chasers falling behind as he sped ahead towards Gryffindors goal hoops, on his own, to hog all the glory.

I wrinkled my nose in distaste. Shame on the snot-rag arsehole who wasn't a team player. There is no 'i' in 'team', Sonny Jim, and all that rot.

True to his word, however, James, with his own fellow Chasers flanking him closely (rah-rah Gryffindor and go team solidarity!) came flying up behind Andrew, manoeuvred so that they surrounded him scarcely three metres away from the hoops and—though none of us could actually see it in the resulting scuffle—James performed a tricky little (and not altogether allowed) move and a split second later, our Chaser Hamish Cheswick was bulleting toward the opposite end of the pitch, James and Sacha Magee not far behind. Andrew recovered a moment later and started after them.

An almost absurdly casual Bludger from Sirius took care of that.

I cheered extra loudly when Hamish put the Quaffle in for one-hundred-and-thirty points in favour of Gryffindor.

"This is so exciting!" screeched Aubrey, waving her arms and clapping enthusiastically.

Remus grinned down at her in evident amusement, caught my eye, and sent me a wink. I grinned back and went on cheering with the rest of them.

That was when it happened. Our Seeker, Anna Catheway (Trina's younger sister, also a fucking machine!) abruptly went into a vertical dive, headed straight for the pitch sixty feet below, and Ravenclaw's Seeker, Higgins, followed immediately; in a race to the Snitch that nobody else had seen yet.

The stands went oddly quiet, as if holding their breath; even the other players had stopped to watch the death-defying dive. I clutched Peter's hand with my left, the boxers held firmly to my chest with my right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aubrey gripping Remus' arm tightly and leaning so far forward it looked as if she might fall over.

Anna and Higgins were a mere thirty feet from the ground, the latter about six inches behind the former. Now twenty… ten…

There was a collective gasp as Anna did a funny, lightning-quick sort of spin mid-air, then sped off towards the sky, her hand held triumphantly in the air, a huge, beaming grin on her face—while Higgins failed to stop in time and ploughed broomstick first into the pitch.

Mr. Locksley's whistle blew, several professor hurried onto the pitch to aid the felled Seeker, and the Gryffindor stands erupted into a deafening, chest-rumbling roar of joyous celebration.

Screaming at the top of my lungs in shocked delight, I grabbed Aubrey by the shoulders and we both started jumping up and down in shrieking happiness. Then we let go, stared at each other in awe, before shrieking again and turning away to more shared merriment.

This time she really did jump on Remus, who let out a barking laugh of surprise but caught her before she fell down (she then proceeded to look horrified with herself and turn an extraordinary shade of crimson) and I leapt forward to hug a total stranger in the row of seats ahead of me—and he hugged me right back, lifting me over the seats and setting me on his shoulders.

I was promptly carried off onto the pitch by him and his still-cheering mates, who broke out into a bawdy Irish drinking song and bounced me along like nobody's business. I joined right in, singing off-key and waving Sirius' boxers above my head in gleeful victory.

"Where are your legs that used to run, hurroh, hurroh,

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroh, hurroh,

Where are your legs that used to run,

When you went for to carry a gun,

Indeed your dancing days are done,

Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye!"

My entourage and I reached the Quidditch changing rooms on the Gryffindor side at the same time that the team landed there, all flushed and sweaty and grinning uncontrollably.

We stopped singing long enough for them to deposit me on the ground, give me a sound slap on the arse, and an affectionate, "Thanks, darlin', it's been grand," before they swiftly scooped up Anna Catheway and carried her off to Gryffindor Tower for our usual celebratory post-match shindig, a herd of whooping and cheering Gryffindors following closely behind; a few more team members were also lifted up and carted off, James, Hamish and Alix included.

"They're rollin' out the guns again, hurroh, hurroh…"

Sirius freed himself from the gaggle of girls—and some blokes—praising him on a tip-top performance, and met me in front of the changing room door. He tossed a wry look after the rowdy crowd of singing boys who'd just bid me farewell, and quipped, "Made some friends, did you?"

"That was brilliant!" I exclaimed breathlessly, throwing my arms around him. "I'm sorry I shouted at you and promise to never do it again if you keep having such utterly gorgeous matches!"

He laughed, squeezing me briefly, before pulling away slightly so as to get a better view of my face. He smelled of leather and sweat and rain, and also, puzzlingly enough, still of peppermint. But he was deliciously warm and after spending an hour in the stands bearing the wind and the wet, I was quite happy to stay wrapped in his arms like that.

"You're getting my boxers wet," he murmured after a moment.

I blinked, then looked stupidly down between us. And he laughed again.

"The ones you're holding in your hand—that were given to milady as a war token, remember?"

He reached behind his neck and pulled the now hopelessly sodden and wrinkled underwear from my fingers, then grinned down at me when he saw the state they were in.

"Held onto them pretty tight, did you?" he remarked, cocking a brow and still grinning.

I rolled my eyes and jabbed my fist into his ribs, taking a step back and muttering, "Oh, shut up." I snatched them out of his hand. "And I'm keeping these. They were a gift, weren't they?"

His face actually fell. In fact, he looked rather crestfallen. "But—it's tradition to give back the token when the brave knight returns from battle."

"Is it now?" I ran my fingers over the silk waistband and said, "You know I'm not one to follow tradition, my brave knight."

He looked panicked now. "It's symbolic, damnit! You have to give them back!"

I threw back my head and laughed evilly, quite enjoying myself.

But then Sirius gripped my wrist and said, in an odd tone of voice, "Er… that cute brunette bird you were sitting with… is she a mate of yours?"

"Aubrey?" I said in surprise, noticing he was no longer looking at me, but at something over my head. "I guess she is, for all that. Why?"

"Because she's, er… conversing with Snivellus and they don't seem to be getting on too well."

I spun around—I felt Sirius pluck his boxer-shorts from my lax grip and stuff them into his pocket—and my stomach turned to hot lead at what I saw.

Snape stood near the entrance to the pitch, his face contorted in fury, his hand gripping Aubrey's upper arm hard enough to bruise her skin. He shook her angrily and shouted something at her that I couldn't hear over the din being made by the exiting crowd of Gryffindors. Aubrey was positively cowering away from him, not even trying to pull her arm from his grip or defend herself, and she looked near tears.

I sent a panicked glance around for Remus or Peter, but couldn't spot them anywhere. Nobody seemed to notice—or care—what was going on.

Cursing loudly, I steeled myself and ran towards them, shoving or weaving my way through the thick crowd of singing and carousing people.

"…they never will take our sons again,

Johnny, I'm swearin' to ye…"

I sustained a sharp elbow to the ribs and several trod-on toes, but made it to Aubrey' side in mostly one piece—just as Snape spat out, "…ever touch me again, filthy Mudblood scum!"

And threw her to the ground.

"You fucking prick!" I shouted, shoving him in fury. "You fucking spineless pathetic prick!"

His wand was out in a flash and he pointed it directly under my chin, sneering, "Another dirty Mudblood who thinks she can lay a hand on me. I feel utterly contaminated."

I tried to slap his hand away, but he held his arm steady and it didn't budge. I realised I couldn't hit him, so I pulled out my other artillery instead.

"I'm a so-called half-blood like you, Snivellus! You're no better than me, than Aubrey—especially Aubrey! You should be thanking her on bended knee that she would even touch you at all—though I'm sure it was hardly on purpose. She's the one at risk of being contaminated, you sodding hypocritical bastard!"

He narrowed his black, maliciously glittering eyes at me and said, so lowly I nearly didn't catch it, "I could crush you. Right here, I could make you feel pain like you've never imagined—"

"Then do it! Let's see if you've balls enough to do it! At least now you're not trying to fight a step up from you."

"You call that Mudblood rubbish a step up?" he hissed, pointing a yellowed finger—from cutting up all his potion ingredients, or else simple lack of hygiene—at Aubrey, who was still crouched on the ground, sobbing and gazing at him in terror.

I narrowed my own eyes. "You git, anything's a step up from you—you're the ground level. The lowest of the low. You make me sick just looking at you."

His features twisted and darkened with inhuman rage and he raised his wand to my face, opening his mouth to curse me—I had no time to draw my own wand—his words were already half-formed—

"Then I'll stop you looking! Exocular—"

"Petrificus totalis!"

A searing pain had started over my eyes, an itching, crawling pain starting from my pupils and spreading outwards and in—until abruptly it was gone.

Snape was laying front-first on the ground, rigid as a board, his dropped wand lying in the grass half a foot away.

Someone grabbed me from behind, holding me, hissing breathlessly in my ear, "Are you mad? You're fucking crazy! God—fucking God, you scared the shit out of me—couldn't get through—"

Though my heart was hammering in my chest, and my eyes still prickled with tears of pain, I freed myself from Sirius' arms and said shakily, "Shut up. Thanks. But shut up."

I bent to help Aubrey unsteadily to her feet. She was trembling so hard I wondered that she didn't just break into a thousand pieces, and tears were streaming freely down her mud-spattered face.

"Is she okay?" Sirius asked me, then tore his gaze away from my face and gently touched the back of his fingers to her cheek, bending his knees slightly in order to look her in the eyes. "You okay, love?"

She gulped wordlessly and shook her head quickly, her face deathly pale under the specks of mud, great fat tears leaking from impossibly wide brown eyes.

Completely at a loss, I glanced at Sirius helplessly, who merely smiled grimly and briefly, then pulled Aubrey against his chest, enveloping her small form in his arms. She clung to him immediately, her fingers curling into the back of his Quidditch robes and her thin shoulders shaking with choked, wracking sobs.

Honestly, you'd think Snape had raped her or something. But then, I had no idea what had happened, what he'd said to her before I got close enough to hear. I was fully aware of the sorts of names his lot had for Muggleborns and supposed "blood traitors", what they thought of us—even what some of them actually did or tried to do to us. So for all I knew, she very well could feel violated in such an intimate, emotionally scarring way. And Aubrey was remarkably innocent and good-hearted for someone living in the world ours was rapidly becoming. I imagined it was shock more than actual personal hurt. I didn't know for certain.

But I did know one thing. The minute I found James, I was sooo in on whatever the hell it was they had planned for Snape. And, mercilessly and efficiently, he was so getting his arse kicked.