Stick to your own lane

"So at what point do we start worrying?" I asked Lily when we sat down to lunch.

Not bothering to grab a plate, I picked up a Yorkshire pudding and put a huge bite of it into my mouth, quickly regretting it when I found I couldn't actually close my jaw properly.

Seeing Lily shoot me a look, I put a hand across my overstuffed mouth to hide my secret shame.

We had gone all the way up to Dumbledore's office to tell him about Regulus Black threatening our DADA teacher, Professor Mison, only to find the Headmaster absolutely nowhere to be seen.

Professor Mison was mysteriously missing, the new substitute teacher was going around giving out anti-Muggle propaganda worksheets, and Dumbledore had apparently decided to go off on a holiday.

I know it might've sounded stupid, but I was actually starting to feel a bit worried by it all.

Again, the idea of just asking Sirius if he knew what his brother was up to popped into my mind. But I couldn't, not after I'd promised myself I would stay away from him.

"We don't know for definite this isn't all a big misunderstanding," Lily brushed it off from her seat opposite mine, scooping a portion of cottage pie onto her plate.

She was clearly trying to reassure herself as much as she was me, but I could see the tiniest spark of doubt in her green eyes.

"Perhaps that awful worksheet was just taken from a really old textbook when things like wizard superiority were considered a basic fact," she continued. "The substitute might not have been aware of it."

"And the fact I saw Regulus arguing with Professor Mison right before Mison mysteriously disappeared?" I asked.

"Coincidence," she said, putting a dainty forkful of food to her mouth, "And they could have just been having a disagreement about homework."

I felt my eyes almost roll back into my head at the sheer extent of her denial. I dropped my half eaten Yorkshire pudding onto a nearby napkin.

"For Merlin's sake, Lily," I said. "You can't really believe that?"

A cloud of noise approached our table interrupting our conversation. It was Sally and Marlene.

They were followed closely by James, leading the rest of his group towards us. As expected he was heading straight for Lily.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see a very unenthusiastic Sirius lagging behind Remus and Peter.

I sighed inwardly. It would be hard trying to ignore someone when they were sat right with you at the dinner table.

"Hey," Sally said as she sat down next to me, cheerful as usual. "Haven't seen you all morning."

Sirius dropped lazily into the seat next to James just opposite and I tried to keep my train of thought. "We went to see Dumbledore about something, but he's not in his office," I told her.

"I'd be surprised if he was," James commented, overhearing what I'd said, "seeing as how he's visiting the Durmstrang School."

"What?" both Lily and I chorused.

He raised an eyebrow at our interest, "My dad mentioned it in a letter a few days ago," he shrugged. "Apparently the Ministry officially requested the Headmaster there to 'aid in relations between schools'."

I gave Lily a look. So the Ministry had pulled Dumbledore out of Hogwarts just as things were about to get turned upside down.

They were clearly involved in all of this as well.

Lily shook her head almost imperceptibly at me, as if to say I was over-reacting, and I had to clench my teeth together to avoid saying what I felt out loud:

Improving 'relations between schools', my left foot!

The Ministry obviously ordered Dumbledore out of the way so they could orchestrate the DADA teacher coup. Without the Headmaster they knew the school would be left defenceless.

How can you not see this, Lily?!

But what I couldn't work out was what Regulus had to do with any of it…Did the Blacks they really have that much inside influence at the Ministry? Or maybe they were just their pawns in all of this.

Oh, don't worry; I was fully aware that I was starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Just pass me a tin foil hat and I'd be on my way.

"Ooh," Sally said enthusiastically, "Maybe there'll be the chance for us to visit Durmstrang too, as an exchange student or something."

"I'm sure I could 'improve relations' with a few of the boys there," Marlene smirked dirtily.

Remus gave her an unimpressed look over the top of his food.

"They're all supposed to be really good fighters over there," Peter commented as he took a mouthful of Butterbeer and gulped it down noisily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "They have hand to hand combat lessons as part of the school curriculum."

"What's the point in fighting with your hands when you have a perfectly good wand?" James said.

"Oh I dunno, Prongs," Sirius said, idly picking a chip up from his plate, "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, eh?"

James let out a light scoff. "I'll take your word for it, mate."

Sirius dropped the chip back down again without taking a bite, and when I looked properly I noticed he hadn't touched a single bit of his food.

"What were you going to see Dumbledore about, anyway?" Sally asked me in an undertone, as the others continued to talk about the merits of visiting other schools.

Though she thankfully kept her voice low, it still somehow managed to attract Sirius's attention. I could see him watching us carefully from across the table.

"I'll tell you later," I told her.

At that moment, Peter seemed to notice his friend's still-full plate, already devouring the leftover food with his eyes.

"Are you going to eat that?" he asked tentatively.

Still trying to listen in on our conversation, Sirius pushed his food towards him impatiently.

"Come outside," he said suddenly, more a statement than a question, and without waiting for a reply he got to his feet and started walking towards the doors of the Great Hall.

I sat there clueless for a second before I realised he was talking to me.

Glancing at Lily, she gave me a small shrug, and the others all looked at me expectantly until I had no choice but to get up and follow in his footsteps. As I walked past Marlene I sensed her watching me especially carefully.

I didn't know what he wanted, but without Sprout there to tell him to sit back down I knew there would be no avoiding him this time.

.o.

When I stepped outside, Sirius was already waiting for me as though he'd been there for ages, propped up against the wall.

He straightened when he saw me, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. When I came to a stop in front of him we both just stood in silence while he apparently tried to find the right words to say.

I watched him, utterly bemused, wondering if this counted as me breaking my promise not to talk to him anymore.

"Is this about Regulus?" I asked finally.

My choice in topic seemed to catch him off-guard, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"No... Wait, what?"

I could have kicked myself, looking back at him guiltily.

"You've got to be joking?" he demanded, his expression suddenly angry. "I warned you about how dangerous he can be, and you're still talking to him?"

"No, it's not like that," I said, for some reason starting to explain myself to him like a naughty child caught by her father.

I paused, composing myself. If Sirius was going to force me to talk to him then I may as well make the most of it.

"Do you know anything about your brother's meeting with Professor Mison this morning?" I asked calmly. "I saw them arguing. It looked like Regulus was threatening him or something."

His brow creased in response, the anger fading back into confusion.

"He was trying to force him to take some kind of note that had instructions on it," I continued, "but Mison wouldn't do."

I thought back to the look of sheer rage on Regulus's face when the Professor wouldn't do as he was told. I'd never seen anyone talk to a teacher like that before.

"What was on the note?" Sirius asked, his voice unexpectedly low.

"I don't know," I replied uselessly. "It had some kind of charm on it. It set itself on fire before I could read it.

"The thing is..." I carried on uncertainly, knowing the next part could make me look extremely paranoid, "...Mison didn't turn up in our DADA lesson today, and...I dunno...I'm kind of worried that-"

"-That Reg has done something to him," Sirius finished.

I couldn't help but look up at him now.

To my great surprise he didn't break out into his usual bark of a laugh.

Unlike Lily, it became startlingly clear that he didn't find it all that farfetched.

"That was what you went to see Dumbledore about?" he asked.

I nodded.

"So do think he could've had something to do with it?" I asked carefully when he didn't say anything else.

"I don't know," he replied eventually. "I mean my brother's an idiot for the choices he's made, but he's not evil. His friends on the other hand? Pretty nasty characters from what I can gather. Whether they're capable of anything like what you're getting at though..."

He seemed to be talking to himself as much as he was to me, I could almost see the thoughts running behind his eyes. His sudden intensity was disconcerting.

His focus returned to the room, his attention landing back on me.

"I'm going to tell Prongs and the boys what you saw. See if we can come up with a plan to find out more."

"Okay," I replied slowly.

"In the meantime just don't do anything stupid," he added.

"So you want me to lie down, forget what I heard, and let the boys sort it out?" I stated.

He picked up on the edge of irritation in my voice. "He's my brother, Cheryl. Don't you think I'd be the one best placed to find out what was going on?"

He paused for a second, his expression changing. "Although..." he said with a tilt of his head, "lying down does sound like a good idea now you mention it. Perhaps we could try it together?"

I responded to his innuendo with a face of stone, unable to believe he was still capable of making jokes when all this was going on.

He let out a short breath of laughter.

"Oh yes, I forgot. You're not playing with me anymore, are you?" he seemed simultaneously entertained and unsettled by the fact. "It's just a bit of fun, Morland. You are allowed to have that from time to time. You won't end up in Azkaban for it, I promise."

"I'm not Marlene," I stated. She was the one who seemed to get off on all the fake flirting and touching.

"Believe me, I'm aware of that."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Would it really be so hard to just be friends?" I asked.

He stared back at me, and for some reason a memory of my dream from the previous week chose that particular moment to flash into my head. I pushed it firmly away. It wasn't as if I had dreamt about Sirius on my own free will, James had implanted it there. Whatever I had felt for him wasn't real.

Sirius's eyebrow quirked upward as if he could tell what I was thinking. Or maybe he was just wondering why I had gone suddenly quiet.

"I just mean," I clarified, "since James and Lily are together, we're probably going to be spending a lot of time together. Whether we like it or not. Don't you think it would just be easier if we could just act like we're actually normal? I mean is it really so hard? You're fine with Sally and Dorcas, even Lily."

He continued to study my face.

Eventually he replied, "Okay."

"Okay...?"

"You want to be friends, let's be friends."

There was something strange about the way he said it that I couldn't quite work out. He didn't seem angry, but he wasn't smiling.

No more fighting. No more anything.

I couldn't believe it was that easy.

When we headed back into the hall there was an arm's length distance between us.

I sat back down in my seat feeling like all our friends' eyes were squarely on us. It made me wonder if they had been gossiping.

"I was just telling Cheryl about our Transfiguration homework," Sirius said easily as he climbed over the bench and reached for his goblet.

Apart from Marlene muttering something under her breath that I couldn't quite catch, no-one else said anything.

But Sirius took us all by surprise when he set his drink back down and said, "Stop."

All of our group stopped to look at him. His gaze was fixed on Marlene.

"Stop what?" she demanded, her jaw jutting defensively in surprise.

Without waiting for his answer she gave a humourless laugh. "I don't remember you telling me to stop last night." Her ice-blue eyes flashed at him the way they always did when she was trying to cause trouble.

For some reason his gaze landed on me before looking back over at her. He didn't say anything this time.

Marlene noticed and snorted.

"Please. Cheryl knows you're only using her just to get in her pants. She's waited this long, why would she waste her first time on you?" It burst from her mouth, as if she'd been waiting to say it.

James's eyebrows moved high above his glasses.

Like the rest of our group I just sat there in dumb silence, unable to believe she'd actually just said it. In front of all of us.

Nobody spoke.

I looked expressionlessly at my supposed friend, who had just outed my inexperience in front of everyone in a way even the Marauders never had.

"You really do deserve one another," I said, looking from her to Sirius.

He seemed to open his mouth to say something to me, but I looked quickly away before he had the chance. Anything he had to say would only make it worse.

"You're better off without him, anyway," Marlene said to me, apparently oblivious as to what she'd done. "Everyone knows you should stick to someone easy to handle for your first."

She looked around her. "Like Peter," she said helpfully, gesturing towards him, pleased that she had managed to find someone I was worthy of.

Peter looked like he wanted to crawl underneath the table as much as I did.

"Be quiet now, Marlene," Lily said seriously.

Marlene looked brazenly back at her. "What? I was only trying to-"

"Marlene…" Sally warned.

She held her hands up. "Fine. Obviously no one appreciates my matchmaking. Don't come crying to me when she ends up a fifty year old virgin with twenty cats." She gestured carelessly at me.

Has anyone ever said something so blindingly crappy that you've forgotten where you are, who you are, and everything around you seems to pale into insignificance in comparison with your own blood boiling in anger?

"I'd rather be a fifty year old virgin than an untrustworthy loud mouth who can't keep her trap shut for more than 30 seconds."

The sound of James's surprised laughter from in front of me was the only sign that I had just said it out loud.

Marlene was too shocked to reply.

I stared at her unapologetically, the ringing noise of rage still filling my eardrums, and I could feel myself starting to shake waiting for her to answer.

When she didn't I made the most of her silence, removing myself from the table and walking out of the hall.

.oOo.

Lily dropped a handful of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean onto my blankets on her way over to Dorcas's bed, where she had taken temporary residence.

After lessons had finished for the day I hadn't felt like going down to dinner, so Lily had offered to hang out with me in the girls' bedroom, making use of the leftover sweets she had bought during our last trip to Hogsmeade.

Without even realising it she had turned into possibly the best friend I had ever had.

I put a deep red bean into my mouth, hoping for strawberry.

I had to chew it quickly to avoid spitting it out, "Yack," I grimaced, sticking my tongue out in disgust, "tastes like dirt".

She gave a laugh.

"They can be deceptive," she remarked, putting an ugly brown one into her own mouth. Her lips curved into a smile, "raspberry," she said, savouring it.

"Talking of looks being deceptive," she said slowly, "are you going to talk about what happened with Marlene earlier?"

I couldn't pretend I didn't know what she meant.

I shrugged, chewing on a tasty popcorn flavour bean. "Sick of people thinking they can walk all over me."

Lily nodded. "I have to admit, I was a tiny bit impressed," she revealed. "I mean it wasn't the most eloquent speech, calling her an untrustworthy loudmouth-"

"True though," I interjected flatly.

She repressed a smile.

"It felt like before," I confided, "when the Marauders would use my weaknesses against me and get everyone to laugh at the 'Beaver'."

"You're not the Beaver anymore," Lily said.

I sat up on my bed to face her, dangling my legs over the side. "No, I'm not," I replied. "And Marlene can go and suck eggs if she thinks I'm going to apologise."

"That's down to you, I suppose," she said simply, rifling through the rest of the sweets from her room.

"I just can't believe it came from her, out of everyone," I said a little more quietly.

The sound of footsteps dashing up the stairs caught both of our attention, and regardless of my previously brave words my heart still started hammering the second we heard the door handle turn.

"Mary," Lily said in surprise, when our not so mystery visitor entered the room.

Mary eyed us suspiciously as she came in.

"What are you two doing in here at this time?" she wanted to know. "Usually I can come up here and read my book in peace."

She made her way over to her chair with a book nestled under her arm just as she had said.

"Wait, don't tell me," she continued. "This is about what happened with Marlene?" She gave me a shrewd look, then settled straight into her book.

I blanched. "Who told you?"

"Potter," she said simply, deigning to look up at me briefly, "He's telling everyone who'll listen. Seems to find it hilarious. No idea why."

"Lily..." I started, looking over at her pleadingly.

"Don't worry, I'll speak to him," she reassured me.

Mary sighed loudly and placed her book on her bedside table, giving up on any hope of her beloved quiet reading time.

"Would you like an Every Flavour Bean, Mary?" Lily asked her politely, purposefully ignoring the other girl's sour expression.

Mary looked at the multi-coloured beans and back at Lily, and then reluctantly got up from her seat to fetch one.

"Why not," she said, "I need something to cheer me up."

"Why, what's the matter?" I asked, not really interested, but grateful to hear about someone else's problems.

At first she didn't seem to want to share it with me, but the idea of gossiping to a willing listener seemed to prove too tempting.

"It's Ant," she said, flouncing dramatically onto Dorcas's bed next to Lily. "He hasn't been himself lately. Like there's always something on his mind. I've tried to get him to open up and talk to me, but he keeps saying there's nothing wrong."

"Well, then maybe there isn't," Lily said simply.

I thought back to the last time I had seen him, after he had apparently followed me out onto the grounds in the dark. He had left me to face the snarling black dog all alone.

I mean, yes, it had turned out to be Padfoot, but Ant hadn't known that. His weird, stalkerish behaviour had really freaked me out that night.

"He gets this blank look in his eye whenever I'm talking to him," Mary continued, "like he doesn't even realise I'm there."

Whatever I thought about Mary, she actually did seem genuinely worried about him.

There was a beat of silence. "Maybe you could talk to him?" she asked me in a reluctant voice.

"Why me?" I asked, instantly feeling defensive.

"He has a thing for you, doesn't he?" she said, snapping the words out. "Maybe you could get to admit what's wrong," she added in a more controlled voice.

I let her request hang in the air, avoiding giving her an answer. If it was up to me, there was no way I was going anywhere near Anthony ever again.

.oOo.

The next morning, I trounced across the muddy grounds towards my Care of Magical Creatures lesson near the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

By the time Marlene had got to bed the previous night, it was late enough for me to pretend I was asleep. Just as before, I woke up only to find she had already left the room.

As was usual for me I was a little late for class, and Professor Kettleburn had already started talking when I arrived.

He bent down to adjust the strap on one of his false legs, and I took advantage of his distraction, hurrying to sit next to Lily.

"Blasted thing," he said gruffly, before returning to his speech about the time he provided a worm for the The Fountain of Fair Fortune school play, which had then turned out to be an extremely flammable Engorged Ashwinder.

He had told us all the story before, but it never failed to make Sirius and James laugh out loud.

Their laughter was infectious, and I had to remind myself not to smile.

"I've been thinking about what you said about Professor Mison's disappearance," Lily said, once we had been set to work on rubbing chilli powder on a family of Salamanders that had contracted scale rot.

I cast my eyes up at her, pausing my application of the fiery powder. In all of my self-pity I had forgotten all about Mison.

"You might have a point about Regulus having something to do with it," she said hesitantly.

I closed the door of the small Salamander cage and dropped my hands to the table, giving her my full attention now.

"What makes you say that?" I asked, wondering what had changed her mind.

"I saw something strange, on my way over to get food from the Hogwarts Kitchens last night."

"Hold on," I said, momentarily distracted, "you went to the Hogwarts kitchens?"

"What?" she said defensively. "I was hungry. All we'd eaten was rubbish."

I closed my mouth, making a mental note to ask her how she knew the way into the Kitchens another time.

"Anyway," she said, "I'd got halfway there when I almost ran straight into Regulus and his awful friends. They stopped talking the second they saw me, but not before I heard them mention Professor Mison's name."

My pulse started throbbing uncomfortably. I had never really stopped to think what would happen if my suspicions were right.

Please no, I thought desperately, not Mison.

Why couldn't they have targeted someone I hated, like Slughorn?

.o.

Heading back up the grounds to my next lesson, I felt the dread in my stomach; it was Defense Against the Dark Arts next.

I had already asked Lily to share her new information with Sirius so I wouldn't have to talk to him, and when I chanced a look back over my shoulder I could see her doing exactly as I had asked, talking closely with him and James on the outskirts of our Care of Magical Creatures lesson.

They were listening intently, probably trying to work out what on earth was going on in our normally eventless school just as much as we were.

When I got to DADA I was extremely disappointed to find that Mison had not made a miraculous reappearance.

From the looks of it as I quickly scanned the classroom, the substitute Professor Military still had us all in an alphabetical seating order that separated myself and Marlene.

I felt my heart skip a beat despite myself when I saw that Jesse Mederos had already taken his place in the seat next to mine.

He was the kind of handsome that caught you by surprise every time you saw him. Kind of like Sirius, but with a solid injection of boy next door.

"Hi," I whispered as I sat down, watching him as he laid out his quill and parchment on the desk in front of him.

When he peered up at me he gave me a slow, genuine smile in response.

"Hi," he replied, edging over so I could get in.

I glanced nervously at the front of the class and saw that Professor Military was already stood there, leaning his hands on his desk and waiting for everyone to be seated.

As always, he looked about one second from hexing anyone unlucky enough to make eye contact.

His red-rimmed blue eyes caught mine suddenly, and I looked away as quickly as I humanly could.

I felt myself shudder. It was as if he had sensed my thoughts.

.o.

The lesson felt like one of the longest of my school life.

Even longer than the time the Marauders had sat behind me in third year just so they could shoot balled-up pieces of spit parchment at the back of my head all lesson.

I had no idea what Military was saying, because all I could think of was poor Professor Mison, probably out there somewhere horribly murdered by Regulus and the Ministry.

The only good thing was Military had apparently forgotten about retrieving our anti-Muggle homework.

At the end of the lesson I couldn't wait to get out of the classroom, but it seemed like it wasn't meant to be.

Just as I reached the doorway I heard someone say my name.

I stepped outside and whirled around only to find Jesse stood there, his bag slung effortlessly over one arm. His warm brown eyes found mine and he smiled.

"I don't know about you, but I was kind of hoping he would be gone by today," he said, nodding in the direction of Military, now obscured by the thick classroom wall.

"Yeah, me too," I said dully.

Jesse didn't get it. To him it was just an inconvenience. To Professor Mison it was probably life or death.

He beckoned us forwards and started to walk me through the corridor. "We haven't really had much chance to talk, have we?" he noted in his faint accent.

"No," I agreed. Military's eyes would probably pop out of their sockets if anyone dared to so much as breathe in his lesson.

"I was thinking maybe we could get to know one another outside of the classroom sometime, seeing as how we are probably going to be seated next to one another for the rest of the year."

I looked doubtfully up at him. Was he really asking what I thought he was asking?

"There a trip to Hogsmeade coming up," he said carefully, "perhaps we could meet up in the Three Broomsticks? Just for a Butterbeer," he added, as if I had imagined us downing lines of Firewhiskey.

Wanting nothing more than to leave the vicinity now, I said, "Er, yeah, okay, why not, sounds good."

Except it didn't sound good, it sounded completely terrifying.

Not giving him chance to say anything else, I waved a quick goodbye and ran-walked in the opposite direction as fast as my legs would carry me.

Once I was out of eye-line I smacked the heel of my hand into my head as hard as I could bear.

"Idiot!" I muttered violently.

Marlene was right, boys like Jesse were way too good looking for me, and way too nice. I should stick to someone who wouldn't mind my lack of experience. Like Peter, or the quiet boy in my Charms class.

Jesse had probably had loads of girlfriends.

He would probably find me boring or weird, and not even in a good way, and then he'd never want to speak to me again, and we'd have to face each other during every following DADA lesson afterwards.

And we were supposed to be meeting in The Three Broomsticks… The one place where all of my friends would probably be. Perfectly placed to eavesdrop on us.

"Er, yeah, okay," I mimicked what I had said to him in a dumb voice as I crossed the Transfiguration Courtyard.

A nearby solitary first year shot me a funny look and started to walk a little faster.

I couldn't help but laugh to myself.

"Well you've really gone and done it this time, haven't you, Cheryl?" I muttered under my breath.

"Done what and with who?" someone enquired at my side.

My head shot around. "Marlene," I said guardedly.