PART XIV

NEWTs were coming quickly upon them. 7th years were frantically studying for the biggest exams of their lives and 5th years were nearly as bad. Lily could have sworn she had even seen Sirius cracking a book. She and Remus had continued tutoring Peter over the next few days, and he had made remarkable strides. Lily was quite sure that he would pass nearly all of his exams with relative ease.

James had begun studying when he and Lily began dating. It was an excuse to be with her, and truth be told, he didn't want to be the one in the group with the lowest grades. Remus and Lily were absolute perfectionists when it came to grades, Peter had been studying madly for the past couple of months, and Sirius was annoyingly good at everything thanks to his extremely strict pureblood upbringing as a child.

Finally the first date of NEWTs dawned. James awoke slumped over a table, a book being used as his pillow.

"Good morning!" Lily said brightly as she exited her room, properly dressed and looking perfect.

He groaned. "How can you be so pleasant? You've been a wreck for weeks and now you're fine!"

She smiled. "Oh I'm sure that about 5 minutes from now the calming potion I've taken will wear off. I do better on exams when I've got that adrenaline rush going, you know get the mind pumping, but I absolutely can't get myself ready or eat when I'm that nervous. Were you down here all night?" she asked concerned.

He nodded his head unhappily. "I was studying for charms, nasty bugger of a class."

"I'll have you know that's my favorite subject!" she said indignantly. "Just because we don't have to, oh I don' t know, change a frog into a dartboard doesn't mean its not interesting."

James smiled at the mental picture of a frog dartboard. "Yes it does," he answered simply. "I mean levitating and such is important, but I could care less about how to add twinkling lights to a tree or charming a book to sing." He thought a moment. "Scratch that, some of these things could be good prank material."

She pursed her lips in a look reminiscent of Professor McGonagall. "You're head boy!" she reminded him disapprovingly. "You really need to act more responsibly now. I mean you're practically an adult and you almost overslept for exams." She checked her watch. "EXAMS!" she hollered. "Oh my Merlin! We have to go. I have to study. I'm blanking. I'm completely clueless. Was the Elf Uprising in 1243 of 1423? The numbers are getting all switched in my head! Help me James!"

He rolled his eyes. "It's definitely been 5 minutes," he muttered under his breath. "Come along Lily dear. We're going down to the Great Hall now. We have charms first. Remember charms? It's the subject you just said you loved," he reminded her calmly. He cast a spell on his clothes quickly that made them clean and tidy looking. Then he pulled Lily down to the place where exams were to take place.

They reached the room just in time to hear Sirius being called in. He waved at them with a broad grin on his face and tossed a carefree wink at a swooning witch next to him. Then he was gone through the enormous suddenly quite intimidating doors. Lily and James exchanged incredulous looks. "He's mental," they said together.

A few moments later it was Lily's turn. James went over to wait with Remus and Peter. "Hey guys," he said with a smile. "You ready?" he questioned.

Remus nodded quite seriously but remained silent, a look of intense concentration on his face. Peter though looked quite nervous and seemed to have developed a noticeable twitch. "Yes…I mean I think so," he replied. "How about you?"

"I'm nervous," he admitted. "But I think I'll be fine." He chuckled. "Oh man you should have seen Lily this morning. She was a complete wreck. It was quite funny."

"Lupin, Remus?" an aged wizard called.

Remus stood up and took a deep breath. He left with heartfelt wishes of good luck from all of his near by peers.

Finally Peter was called and James along with him. He entered the room and saw Remus in the corner with the aged wizard performing what looked like a complicated charm used to change the hair color of the caster.

He turned towards the old witch assigned to examine him. "So what's first?" he asked.

Without cracking a smile she informed him of a list of charms he ought to know and what order to do them in. James was happy to say that he did all of them at least mostly correct. He was confident in saying that he scraped together at the least an acceptable.

"So how'd you do?" he questioned his girlfriend who was frantically searching through a book.

"Um…just fine… I mean will you hold on?" She sounded frazzled. Finally the page turning stopped. "Yes!" she shut the book triumphantly. "I got it right."

He looked at Lily amusedly. "Did you just look through an entire textbook because you weren't sure of one answer?"

She looked at him and in a voice that one would use to explain something to a small child concluded, "Yes." She pulled out yet another book from her bag. "Now leave me alone. Transfiguration is next and Merlin knows that I need the most help on that."

He rolled his eyes. "I love you too," he said sarcastically before walking away to go chat with Sirius. "Hey mate. How'd it go?" he asked his friend.

"Piece of cake," Sirius replied. "Honestly, I don't understand why people make such a big deal about exams. Its not like they're hard or anything."

James chuckled. "Well Padfoot, not everyone has your immense intellect."

"I know," he replied arrogantly. "Beauty and brains, no wonder the ladies love me!"

"And so modest!" James exclaimed. "I've never met a more humbler wizard than you. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to brush up on a few facts before the exam."

"Bye," Sirius shouted, receiving angry looks from the others around them trying to study. "What did I do?" he asked dumbfounded as someone through a quill at him.