CHAPTER EIGHT

The crowd of Gryffindor students coming into the common room from dinner woke Jane up that afternoon, and she and the boys stayed there a bit longer before she decided that she was going to head up to bed early. She had a slight stomach ache, and she just wanted to curl up in her bed and fall right back to sleep so that she didn't have to deal with it.

The next morning, Jane was awoken by Mary's cat, Henry, as he jumped onto her and started kneading his paws into her stomach, his sharp claws, pricking at her skin as they bypassed the fabric of her night shirt.

"Ugh," Jane moaned sleepily, "get off, Henry."

She pushed the cat off of her bed and rolled over.

"Don't be mean to him," Mary said, picking the white fluff ball up off the floor and hugging him close to her chest despite his clear disapproval of the action. "It's time to get up anyway."

Jane reluctantly sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She didn't want to go to class; she just wanted to sleep, but she rolled out of bed anyway. She took a little longer getting ready than she usually did, even Marlene got done before her, and that was saying something because Marlene had always been so particular about her looks. Jane combed her brush through her tangled hair lazily and brushed her teeth slowly in a sleepy daze.

"Merlin! Could you have taken any longer?" Jane heard Sirius say as she finally met up with the boys down in the common room. She glared at him, not in the mood to hear his complaints about her at the moment. He took a step back from her; her grey eyes had dark circles underneath them.

"Wow, you look terrible," James stated.

"Thanks, James. You're such a charmer," she said, rolling her eyes at his lack of tact.

"Are you okay, Jane?" Remus asked. She only shrugged.

"I'm just tired is all. I think all that sugar from yesterday is making me a little slow."

"And cranky," Sirius muttered under his breath, but Jane heard him anyway.

"No, that'd just be you, as always," she replied, but he acted as if he hadn't heard her, now used to her ever-growing sarcastic comebacks to his array of insults he occasionally pointed at her.

"Well, let's go. I'm starving!" Sirius said, wrapping an arm around Jane's shoulders only to have her push him off her.

"You're always starving," Remus said, laughing.

The rest of the day was kind of slow. In Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor Ashworth practically called Jane out for not paying attention, which she didn't find very fair because Caradoc Dearborn and Coleman Vane had been holding their own conversation in the back of the classroom for the better part of the lecture, and they hadn't gotten in trouble at all. In History of Magic, Marlene got tired of kicking Jane's seat and finally just let her sleep, only waking her again at the end of class. This caused a lot of problems for Jane because Professor Binns decided to give them an essay due that coming Friday, and Jane had no notes of her own to go by. Luckily, Lily was talking to her again, so she could always use Lily's notes.

At lunchtime, Jane decided to skip and take a nap instead; she wasn't that hungry anyway as her body was still clearly angry with her for gorging herself on sugar the previous afternoon instead of a proper supper. She could at least be rested up for Charms class, and luckily on Tuesdays, first years got the last class period off, so Jane only had to suffer through that one class. So, she walked up to Gryffindor Tower and curled up in her four-poster, falling asleep almost immediately.

After a while, Jane felt someone gently shaking her awake.

"Jane, wake up."

Jane stretched, yawned, and opened her sleepy eyes.

"You slept through Charms," Lily informed her.

Jane's eyes went wide. She had missed a class? That was her first time missing a class at Hogwarts. How could she be so stupid as to forget to set the alarm on her clock? She shot up in her bed as though she could still make it to her already ended class. Lily filled her in on the things that she missed as they went down to the common room.

"There you are," Jane heard James say.

Upon seeing Lily, James ruffled his already messy hair. Lily took no notice in this, but Jane rolled her eyes at him, which he noticed and promptly frowned at.

"Well, look at you," said Sirius, smirking, "skiving classes."

"No, I-I didn't do it on purpose," Jane defended worriedly; she hadn't thought of it as skipping class until he'd said that.

"Relax, Janie," Sirius said, resting his elbow on Jane's shoulder. "I'm proud of you."

"I told you it was an accident," Jane mumbled as she shoved Sirius off of her. He rolled his eyes, not caring.

"Accident or not, you still skived off," he told her pointedly, only trying to annoy her at this point.

"Here," Remus said, handing Jane two wrapped up sandwiches. "We thought you might be hungry."

Jane's stomach growled in response as though to prove his point, and Remus laughed.

"Thanks," Jane said, unwrapping one of the sandwiches and biting into it.

"So, what do you guys want to do?" James asked, falling into a chair.

In all honesty, there was nothing to do. It was too cold to go outside, and as much as Jane loved to roam about the castle, it did get boring sometimes. Their time would be better spent in the library in Jane's opinion; though, she decided not to voice this, knowing that Sirius would have something to say about it. So, they spent the time wondering parts of the castle that they had never been to. Every time they found a new room or corridor, Jane was reminded of the castle's enormity. Five months at Hogwarts and she still hadn't seen all it had to offer or uncovered all its secret rooms and towers.

"Someone needs to make a map of this place," Jane said as they turned down a dark corridor that she hadn't known existed.

Thus, an idea was born in the minds of Sirius and James.