OK, I realise the previous chapters were jsut a huge block, not sure what happened there, but I've tried to fix it for more pleasurable reading..... Thanks for the reviews so far.

Chapter Seven: Astronomy and Abercrombie

The Gryffindor and Ravenclaw sixth years filed into their Astronomy room excitedly; at least, the girls were excited, about finally meeting the new teacher properly. The boys looked irritated, for the same reason, and the Marauders were still shaken by the recent event on the stairs. Lily wasn't speaking to James.

Sirius and James chose their desks at the back of the room, and Remus and Peter sat either side of them. They got out their books and sat ready; Professor Harlem had not yet appeared, and so the four spent a few minutes flicking dung balls at each other. It was a hazardous game, because you weren't careful you would release the awful smell and be the cause of the whole class's annoyance. Peter performed an artistic move on the dung ball, spinning it towards James' head. The renowned Quidditch seeker ducked just in time and Remus took his role, deftly catching the smelly ball, and putting it away when he saw the teacher enter the room.

"You're getting quite good at this game, aren't you Wormtail?" Sirius commented, sounding mildly shocked.

Peter looked proud, but James shrugged it off, saying, "I'm not surprised, he should be used to handling bad smells by now."

They laughed softly and looked to the front of the class, where Professor Harlem sat up on the desk cross-legged and regarded them all calmly. He had on the same blue robes as he had on the night of the feast, and his dark hair was combed back, falling onto his shoulders. Eventually he spoke.

"Hello and welcome to my lesson. My name is Professor Harlem, and I hope you enjoy the time we have together." He spoke quietly in a soft, Irish accent and looked around the room, making eye contact with each member of the class. "I'm sorry I was late, but the stairways were fucked up – I'm sure you all encountered your own problems on the way here."

The students exchanged glances; they had never heard a teacher swear in a lesson before – in fact they had never heard a teacher swear. Lily turned and glared at James, who looked down ashamedly, regretting the stair stunt.

Professor Harlem continued with a wry smile. "But let's not talk of the Hogwarts anarchy situation, shall we? As you know, we're here to talk about the stars. Astronomy is a fascinating subject, if you have the patience and intelligence to appreciate it..."

As the speech wore on, Sirius found himself clocking off. He stared out of the window, not seeing anything, and then up at the ceiling, which inexplicably had footprints on it. Frowning, he tried to think up reasons for the muddy prints to be there, when James tapped him and brought him back to the class. Sirius raised his eyebrows.

"Look at the girls," James told him, pointing discreetly. Sirius did so, and was amazed. All of them, without exception, were gazing at Professor Harlem, transfixed, some leaning their chins on their hands, and some laying their heads on their arms, simply staring at him. Sirius turned back to James, disbelief etched on his face.

"What the hell?" he mouthed; James shrugged. Looking past him, Sirius saw that Remus had noticed the girls' irrational behaviour, too, and so had Peter, on Sirius' other side. He looked back to the front of the class, where the new professor was still talking.

"I myself find Astronomy to be very cathartic, so whenever you felt that life is getting too much for you, feel free to come up here and study the skies." He beamed at the class, and the girls laughed and returned the smile, while the boys continued to be dismayed.

Professor Harlem turned to Lily, who had raised her hand; but under that blue gaze and his enquiring smile, she gasped, "I have no idea what I was going to say!" and put a hand over her mouth. Harlem laughed. "We'll get back to you, then."

James looked at Sirius again, his eyes and mouth stretched so wide in aghast disbelief that Sirius had to give a snort of laughter. Professor Harlem didn't seem to notice the noise as he jumped rather agilely of the desk, surprising the class with such a quick movement, and picked up his copy of the textbook.

"I'm sorry to start the term off in such a boring way," he told them, looking genuinely apologetic, "but I want you to know about the different planets, and book-learning seems the way to start."

When everyone had got their books out, Harlem told them to find the page on Mercury, as this was the closest planet to the Sun. "We can work our way out from there," he said, before letting them read the page themselves.

Sirius looked down at his book. He had enjoyed Astronomy so far at Hogwarts, because he liked the concept of space and its amazing limitless, with no apparent boundaries. He wasn't sure about this new teacher though, but he thought he would give him a chance to show his worth. He started reading about Mercury.

"An extremely difficult object to observe. Its rather fleeting nature was well known to early civilisations, and it was for this reason that the Greeks called it Hermes, in honour of the swift-footed messenger of the gods. The Roman equivalent of Hermes, and the name by which the planet is known today, is Mercury."

The passage went on, explaining about the planet's properties and size, but before most of the class had gotten very far, Professor Harlem cleared his throat loudly to gain their attention again and said, "I don't want you to read too much about the facts and figures, because no one really gives a shit about that rubbish. In my classes, we'll be discussing more of the legends and the magic of astronomy."

Throughout the lesson he talked to them about Mercury's history and its origins, discovery and possibilities of life while they listened and took notes, but before long it was the end of the lesson. Their homework was to do further reading and research on Mercury, and Venus, the next planet they were to study. Professor Harlem exited as soon as he had finished talking, into the office at the back of his classroom, leaving the students to file out the door, discussing the lesson.

"For someone who claimed he doesn't want to be boring, he did a lot of talking and reading," James grumbled to Sirius.

"Yeah, I'm not too sure about him yet," Sirius agreed thoughtfully, then called to the Gryffindor girls ahead of them, "What did you think, ladies? Sarah, I'm sure you have an opinion?"

"Damn right I do, he was gorgeous!" Sarah replied enthusiastically over her shoulder.

"Our suspicions were proved correct!" Lily declared happily. "He was wonderful!"

James looked annoyed and said, "Yeah, we know what you thought, Lily, going all tongue-tied! It was pathetic!" He'd meant it as a joke, but it came out quite fierce.

Lily seemed affronted for a second, but recovered by asking, "Sounds like someone's jealous, doesn't it, girls?"

"Of course he's jealous!" Sirius laughed. "What else would you expect?" James gave him a friendly shove, which sent him spiralling into a suit of armour. "Sorry!" Sirius gasped to the empty metal knight, which had started shouting and gesticulating wildly. Sirius hurried after the others.

Their next lesson, and the last of the day, was Potions, to their immense displeasure. Not only was it a dull subject, with none of the fun wand waving or incantations that they enjoyed, but also the teacher was a bore, and an unpleasant one at that. To add insult to injury, they had their classes with the Slytherins, which could never be enjoyable, whatever the situation. So it was with slow, heavy footsteps that they trudged down to the dungeons for what was their second Potions class of the sixth year. As the classroom was underground, beneath the school building, it was very cold, and the Gryffindors pulled their cloaks around them and turned their collars up, shivering as they descended further down the dank stairway.

Reaching the bottom, they stamped their feet in a lame effort to keep warm, as they waited for Professor Abercrombie to arrive. James was in the process of creating a small fire for them to warm their numb hands by.

Bethan, her face almost blue with the cold, cried, "Come on, James, or you'll have my cold dead body to explain here!"

"Ah, are you too cold, Bethan?" Sirius cooed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Because it's not like no one else is freezing their arses off, you know – you're special."

Bethan stuck her tongue out at him and pulled his cloak around her more, shivering slightly less, as Abercrombie arrived as if from nowhere and opened the heavy wooden door. She waited in the doorway as they all trooped in, and closed the door behind them with a resounding boom, which reminded them all that they were now shut in for an hour, before they could escape to the sanctuary of their common rooms.

The Marauders took their usual places at the back, and James took out a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, making a loud rustling noise. Remus looked round at him, and put a finger to his lips, gesturing to Abercrombie.

"Oh, she won't notice," James assured him in a whisper, offering the bag around. They all took a handful before the girls, in front of them, heard the rustling and held their hands out, waiting to be offered sweets. James poured ample amounts into each outstretch hand, as Abercrombie, having finished writing something a potion recipe on the board, turned to face the class.

"Right, class," she shrieked in her ear-piercing voice. "Today we are going to continue our work from last lesson, on Truth Potions. Now, I could tell that you were all nervous about trying out these potions," here she flashed what was perhaps meant to be a smile, as if she was being funny, but as she was unused to the practise, it came out as more of a grimace; "but trust me, we shall only ask each other innocent questions, and it will be a while yet before they will be ready to use."

The Gryffindors exchanged bored glances and checked their watches, while the Slytherins looked eager to begin, no doubt keen to test their potions on each other and cause proper humiliation for their friends. Lily turned round to James, whispering, "more sweets?" with her hand held out again.

"Sure," James replied with a smile, passing the bag over. "Fill your boots."

The lesson passed slowly, but with no drama - meaning that no Gryffindors received detention, and there were no fights between the two enemy houses. Towards the end of the hour, James and Sirius had grown very restless, so instead of taking notes from various books on the dangers of Truth Potions, had started a far more entertaining mission of sending sparks at each other under their desks, trying to set fire to things. They had to send a spark, and be careful to put out the one coming towards them, whilst being very discreet about it, so as not to alert Abercrombie. She was generally focussing on the Slytherins, however, so the boys started to lose their caution, and were getting loud when Remus and Peter began to kick both their desks furiously. Looking up, Sirius saw that Abercrombie had turned in their direction, frowning, and seeing that she was making her way towards the back of the room, sent one last spark at James, which landed on his robes beneath the desk.

"And how are you getting on, boys?" She asked with a definite steely tone. Sirius flinched; her voice always reminded him of his mother's, which made him hate her all the more. "Getting a lot of work done?"

"Yes, Professor," Sirius told her sweetly, as Remus next to him continued the innocent scratching with his quill across the parchment, trying to keep his face neutral even though he had just put a potato salad-flavoured bean into his mouth and now couldn't take it out without Abercrombie seeing. Glancing to his left, Sirius had equal difficulty keeping his own face straight as he saw his spark on James' robes start to develop into a flame. Quickly looking back up to Abercrombie's stern white face, he treated her to his most charming grin, which she didn't buy, of course, but by that time the hour was up and they were free to go.

Abercrombie hurried back to the front of the class and said something about homework, but none of the Marauders heard what is was, as Remus was choking on his awful bean, James was trying to put out his fire as Sirius guffawed with laughter, and Peter was ogling Adriana, whom he was sat directly behind.