CW: Talk of drugs
I spent the rest of the school week reading about Occlumency, and then, on the weekend, I decided to approach Sirius about it.
I greeted him on Saturday morning by pulling him aside during breakfast and handing him the book I'd felt most helpful.
"Read it," I said.
"How can I read a book without thinking?" Sirius asked, not looking at the book.
"Ugh," I said, "I hadn't thought of that... well how about we read it during the night because surely your – or, er, our mother wouldn't be in your mind then?"
Sirius just nodded.
Sirius woke me at precisely 11:11 pm that night, holding the Occlumency book, then clambered into my bed and closed the curtain.
"She's gone," he said. "Moony... I'm so sorry I haven't spoken to you earlier; I've been so worried... she said she'll hurt you, James, and Peter if I thought any 'impure' thoughts about you, so practically thinking any thought in which you were featured..."
I thought about how upset I'd been and how much I'd hated and doubted myself, but I pushed that aside. He did like me.
"It's OK," I said.
"So... you think I can learn Occlumency?" said Sirius, lighting his wand and finally looking down at the book and opening it.
"I think you can," I said. "It seems hard, but I think you'll be good at it."
Sirius read through the book for the next few hours, and I watched him awkwardly.
"OK," he said once he was done. It was the early hours of the morning by then. "OK, I think... when she wakes up, I'll try."
"Alright," I said, smiling. "I believe in you. If it goes wrong or something, please let me know."
Sirius nodded, and then our alarm was going off.
"Shit," he said, drawing the curtains and scrambling over to his own bed. I lay down, hoping to get at least a minute of sleep in before breakfast, but James was already doing his run of unnecessary morning optimism.
"James, it's a Sunday!" Peter cried from his bed. "Why is the alarm going off?"
"I set it," said James. "Rise and shine boys, today's going to be a good day!"
"Why did you set it!?" Peter cried.
"Because today is a special day," said James. "I'm going to ask Evans out. Privately."
"Really!?" Peter cried. "What's your plan?"
"Well, I know she studies in the library every Sunday between ten and one," said James, "So then, I'll go to the library, study with her, then ask her if she wants to go to Hogsmeade with me next weekend."
"So... if you want to meet her at ten, why did you wake us at five in the morning?" I asked.
"Because I need to hype myself up," said James.
"You mean you want us to hype you up?" asked Sirius. "For five hours?"
"Yeah, pretty much," said James.
"What do you want us to do?" Peter asked.
"I dunno, just..." James started, but Sirius interrupted by jumping on his bed and shouting across the dormitory, probably waking up the whole castle.
"James Potter is hotter than all the other guys trying to date this girl!" he shouted. "She will love him and kiss him and marry him! Because James and Lily are the perfect pair! Give me a J!"
"J," said Peter and I.
"Give me an A!"
"A!"
"Give me an M!"
"M!"
"Give me an E!"
"E!"
"Give me an S!"
"S!"
"Give me a – a space?"
"Space!"
We all spelt out the rest of James's name (his middle name and last name), then clapped him on the back and showered him with compliments, all the things he wanted to hear. Eventually, he left to have a shower, Peter went back to bed, and Sirius and I went to the passageway that led to Honeydukes.
"Is she there?" I asked.
"Yes... yes..." said Sirius, closing his eyes and clenching his fists. "Wait... wait... wait... sorry this sounds rude, but... but could you please step out for a second... I just..."
"Yeah, yeah, OK," I said, walking out of the passageway and coming out through the statue of the one-eyed witch, then just stood there awkwardly. A few first years passed and looked at me weirdly, but I just gave them my classic awkward smile, and then they all left.
At one point, Emmeline Vance, one of the Gryffindor prefects, passed me, and, after looking me up and down judgementally, asked, "Why are you just standing there?"
"Am I not allowed to stand around in this school on a Sunday?" I asked. I'd meant it to sound like a genuine, polite question, but it came out sounding sarcastic.
"Well – you are... but it's extremely suspicious. You're probably doing drugs," she said.
"I'm not doing drugs," I said. "Check my pockets if you want."
"Well, I'm going to come back here in an hour," said Emmeline, crossing her arms, "and if you're still here, we may need to get Filch and check through your belongings. The use of drugs is very much not allowed at Hogwarts."
"I'm literally just standing here," I said, "I'm literally not... OK, whatever, come back, do whatever you want."
"Great," said Emmeline, smiling a fake smile. "I hope to not see you here in an hour, then."
"OK, then..." I said, and then she left.
What the hell was Sirius doing?
I'd been standing there, outside the statue of the one-eyed witch, for almost an hour. Emmeline Vance would be here soon to flash her stupid badge at me and accuse me of being a druggo.
I would have gone in and seen what was going on, but I didn't want to distract him, because surely if he was taking this long, he was struggling, and I didn't want to go in and make it any harder for him.
I would've left, but if Sirius came rushing out, saying something had gone wrong, I wanted to be able to help him.
Emmeline was back soon enough, and she seemed somewhat happy that I was still there.
"Alright, what are you hiding?" she asked.
I rolled my eyes and pulled my pockets inside out, then waved the only contents, my wand, around at her.
"This is all that's in my pockets," I said.
"Come with me," she said.
I was internally rolling my eyes and groaning, but I followed her anyway. She led me to the common room.
"We're going into your dormitory," she said. "Go on, lead the way."
I rolled my eyes and walked up the stairs to the boys' dormitory, and she followed.
"Which one's your bed?" she asked. I pointed to my bed, and then she grabbed my trunk, which was right next to it, and started looking through it.
"What's this?" she asked, grabbing my calendar.
I froze. "It's a calendar."
She opened the calendar. "Why have you got one day of each month circled? Is that the day you go and get your drugs?"
"No, it's – it's..."
I'd thought of an excuse for almost everything related to my condition, and now I was stumped over a stupid thing like this. I'd never expected anyone other than the marauders to see it, and they all knew what it was about.
What was I supposed to say now?
"Don't have an excuse?" Emmeline asked, a smile toying on her face.
Who else marks one day per month? I thought.
"It's the day a month I get to use a telephone to call my mum," I said. "She's a muggle, so she knows how to use one. I miss her quite a lot while here, so I get to go down to the telephone near Hogsmeade to speak with her."
A stupid excuse, but it was the first believable lie I could come up with.
"And you mark it on the calendar, so you don't forget?"
"Yeah," I said. "It literally has nothing to do with drugs, I don't even know why you're accusing me of that."
She ignored me and kept rummaging through my things. Everything else was just clothes, so she could look as long as she wanted, I had nothing else to hide.
"God, your bag is so messy..." she said.
"Are you going to give me a detention for that?" I asked sarcastically. She just gave me a dirty look.
"Well... it seems fine, but if I ever do see anything... you'll be expelled," she said.
"Can prefects expel people?" I asked.
"No, but Professor McGonagall can, and I can report it to her," said Emmeline, leaving the dormitory. What a snitch.
I left the dormitory, then walked back towards the statue of the one-eyed witch, but bumped into Sirius on my way.
"Hey, are you OK? Did it work? I'm sorry for leaving, I was waiting, but..."
"You were waiting for me?"
"Yeah, I was... but Emmeline Vance came and forced me to come to the dormitory and look through all my things and accused me of doing drugs," I said, rolling my eyes.
"You were waiting for me?" said Sirius again. I nodded. "Oh, I didn't expect you to... I'm sorry... well, she's gone. She put up a good fight, that's why I took so long, but she won't be able to read my thoughts anymore without me stopping her. I... I can do whatever I want now."
"That's great!" I cried, and Sirius grinned.
"Anyway, Emmeline Vance went into our dormitory?" he asked.
"Yeah, she just looked through my stuff, though," I said, "thought I was a druggo."
"Well then, I think we should go into her dormitory," said Sirius. "A little payback, maybe?"
I smiled. "You got an idea?"
"Maybe..." said Sirius. "I say we let James and Peter in on it, too. Marauders assemble!"
"And she... and she said I... she said that she had no feelings for me... she wouldn't go out with me... and I needed to stop joking around and asking her out... she thought I was joking... she thought... all these years... it's been a joke! I can't go five minutes without thinking about her and she thinks I'm joking! It's not a joke!"
"We know, mate," said Sirius. The other three marauders and I were in the kitchens that night, filling a plastic bag with flour, and James had just told us what had happened in the library with Lily.
"Why is the young sir upset?" asked one of the house elves.
"Oh... girl problems," said James.
"What is the young sirs planning to do with the flour?" asked another house elf.
"We're going to bake a cake," I lied. "We're going to try cooking it with our wands."
Our real plan was to put the flour through Emmeline Vance's trunk and leave a note saying, 'Don't be a snitch, just take a snort'.
"Sounds very fun for the young sirs!" cried a house elf, and they began piling more flour into our plastic bag.
"Alright, thank you!" Peter cried. "I think that's enough."
James threw the invisibility cloak over the four of us, and Peter clutched onto the flour, and we walked out of the painting of the fruit bowl and towards the common room.
We turned towards the girls' dormitory and started walking up their staircase. We were fine for the first few seconds, but when I'd reached around the fifth or sixth step, the stairs formed a slide and the four of us fell over and back down into the common room.
Peter let out a cry, causing a few people who were still in the common room to look over in our direction, puzzled.
"I suppose some boys must've tried to go into the dormitory..." Dorcas said to Marlene. "I dunno where they are, though..."
The way she'd said that... so casually... made me think that this was a regular occurrence. We weren't allowed into the other gender's dormitories. But how had Emmeline managed to come into the boys' dormitory earlier?
My friends and I all exchanged a look, then took ourselves and the flour back to our own dormitory to discuss a backup plan.
"That's crap, though," said Sirius, "We can't have girls versus boys wars."
"And if I ever want to sleep with Evans, how am I meant to do that!?" James cried.
"Too much information, James," said Peter. "And I think that's exactly what they don't want you doing."
"But Emmeline came in here before," I said.
"Maybe it's a rule where they can come in here, but we can't go in there," said Peter.
"Well, this idea was too good to not happen," I said, "maybe we should get Marlene and Dorcas in on the plan?"
The other three nodded in agreement, then Sirius took the flour out to the common room to speak to them.
"It has come to my attention that multiple students have been snorting cocaine in the Gryffindor fifth-year girls' dormitories and left all of the powder in the prefect Emmeline Vance's trunk."
Sirius, James, Peter, Dorcas, Marlene, and I were struggling to contain our laughter. It was the next morning, and the entire house of Gryffindor was in the common room, with Professor McGonagall glaring down at all of us, and Emmeline Vance by her side, sniffling.
"Would anyone like to step forward and confess? You will all be missing out on valuable learning time if no one does," said Professor McGonagall.
"Oh no," said James, in mock distress, "We're going to miss Potions! We can't miss Potions!"
"Detention, Mr. Potter," said McGonagall. James just rolled his eyes. "This isn't a joke!"
"Professor, it was flour," said Alice. Everyone turned and looked at her. "My dad's a muggle, and he owns a pizza place, so every morning he's making pizza dough. Sometimes I help him. I know what flour looks like, trust me."
"But – but the message said, 'take a snort'," whine Emmeline. "It has to be cocaine!"
"No, it was flour, trust me," said Alice. Way to ruin our fun. "Put it in a cake or something if you want and watch how you don't get high. It was probably someone's idea of a joke. Now, could we please all go? Breakfast will finish soon, and I'd rather not go the day hungry."
Professor McGonagall frowned. "I will investigate this and speak to you all tonight."
Professor McGonagall ended up finding out the truth of what happened, took fifty points from Gryffindor, and gave Sirius, James, Peter, Dorcas, Marlene, and I detentions for every night until the end of April, which we were all stoked about because we'd be having them with the six of us together.