James was a bit annoyed. Two mornings in a row now, he had awoken to the loud shriek of the same ruddy owl, and two mornings he had listened to said owl deliver a howler to his new best mate. However, if Sirius didn't stop getting howlers, James wasn't sure how much longer he would want Sirius sleeping in the dorm.
When the howler finished shrieking, James yawned, and got out of bed. Then another occurrence occurred for the second morning in a row, he fell over his trunk, and discovered that someone had been rifling through it.
"Sirius?" James said, raising an eyebrow to assign Sirius blame. With a guilty look Sirius grinned back.
"Yes James? Would you like something? I have deduced this due to the fact that you have called my name in a questioning tone and raised your left eyebrow at me." James just rolled his eyes and replied with a "Oh nothing, nothing at all there, Sirius.", deciding that it wasn't quite worth getting into an argument over. James was
mischievous, but he was fairly laid back. And after the great surprise of the dungbombs in potions, he decided to trust Sirius', uh, "intuition", as Remus had dubbed it. Remus was sort of an odd fellow, James thought, as he watched Remus walk over to his trunk. Remus used big words, and it was almost like he was unused to being around kids, or just people in general. He was smart though, James had to admit. He hadn't missed the slight glint of enchantment when James had pulled out the dungbombs at dinner that first night, and he was even more thrilled when Remus had been able to suggest a spell to launch them. Hopefully he'd be willing to help with more pranks in the very near future... With a slight start, James looked at the clock and realized that they needed to be at breakfast soon, or they would be missing it. The final member of the room hadn't yet awoken though, so James decided that he could be elected for that task.
"Sirius? Can I have some of my dungbombs back?" James had a brilliant plan. He'd just throw one at Peter, and viola! He'd be awake!
"Sure. Oh.." Sirius replied, after tossing James one, and realizing that he had just admitted to stealing James' dungbombs again. James grinned, and hurriedly stuck one under Peter's bed, just as Remus walked back through the door.
"James!" Remus cried. "What are you doing?"
"I'm waking Peter up!" James replied, happy with his decision of how to wake Peter up.
"Do you recognize how much this will stink up the room?" "Oh." That's when the dungbomb exploded.
After a hearty breakfast, they had their first class of herbology, which would then be followed by defense against the dark arts and history of magic. James hoped that defense against the dark arts would be cool, because honestly, who wanted to spend all day playing with plants or learning about history? Not him!
Slowly the walked to the classroom where herbology was being held, due to the belief that first years on their second day of school were to irresponsible to work with real plants. James disagreed with this opinion, they're just plants! So he was extremely surprised when Sirius actually seemed to take an interest in the class.
'Why are you actually taking notes?' James scribbled on a note to him.
'I like the outdoors, I want to be able to get out there and out of this castle as soon as possible!'
'But notes? Really?'
'Actually I just didn't want to get on the teacher's bad side. Cissy told me that if you get on her bad side she'll make you clean out the greenhouses without magic.'
'Cissy? As in your cousin Narcissa?' 'That would be her!' 'Any possibility that she's joking? I mean, that kid in the front row fell asleep 20
minutes ago, and she hasn't yelled at him.' 'Maybe she's lying in wait.'
'Or maybe your just stupid.' 'It's "you're" you stupid prat.' 'Really? Your really going to correct my grammar?' ' "you're" going to make the same mistake twice?' 'Yes. I think class is almost over at least.' 'And on the bright side, we have detention tonight!' 'First detention of our lives! This is a monumental day.' 'Let's try and get Peter and Remus to go down with us next time though.' 'They're not going to get caught. No matter how stupid it is.' 'Why would you say that, Mr. Black?' 'Well Mr. Potter, Peter looks to scared to be caught. Maybe even too scared to try
it in the first place. Remus is too smart to be caught, and he has an innocent face. Us on the other hands...'
'That's a good point. Front men for our pranks!' 'Absolutely. You can try and convince them.' 'I don't think it will be that hard, Sirius. I mean, Remus did volunteer that spell for
the first prank, and I think that Peter wants to fit in.' 'That's a good point..'
'Wait, did she just assign homework?'
'Yes. Sixteen inches about the medicinal uses of muggle plants due in two weeks.'
'No way! How are we supposed to do that much of an essay? It's the 2nd day of school!'
'What do muggle plants even look like?'
"Really Sirius?" James said, as they walked out of class. "What do muggle plants look like?"
"Yeah? Have you ever seen one?" Sirius looked truly bewildered, and James couldn't help but laugh at his expression.
"Well, it's not due for another two weeks. We can try and teach you about muggle plants by then.." Remus replied, coming in once more as the voice of reason.
Sirius visibly brightened. "Oh yeah! Remus! Your mum's a muggle! You know about muggle plants!"
"Yes. I know about muggle plants. My mum and I plant a garden every year." Remus said with a self-conscious laugh.
"That's brilliant!" Sirius fairly shouted, exuberant at the thought of having a real live garden. James took the opportunity of Remus distracting Sirius to tack a note on his back. Yes, it was a bit of a muggle trick, but James didn't know any real magic yet, he could so far only transfigure a match to a needle, or charm a brick to read the words "knock here." Why James knew that charm was beyond him, and he couldn't think of any practical pranking occupation for that charm. Or why he had learned it in the first place. So James had to be content with just using muggle notes and tape for now. Luckily, Sirius hadn't taken his spellotape along with the dungbombs that morning, spellotape was stickier and stronger than muggle tape, and almost impossible to remove. Basically, Sirius' back was stuck reading the words "If you can read this, hex my hair girly colors" until he was made aware of this fact, and could get the tape to come off. Hopefully, that wouldn't be for a while now.
~Cessare~
Remus Lupin wasn't exactly having a great day. After being awoken far too early by an owl(again!), he was tired. When this fact was combined with the upcoming pull of the moon, and the late time in which he fell asleep the night before, he had been sore the minute he got out of bed. Herbology was a lesson largely involved with notes for now, until they got to work with the real plants, so that lesson was fairly boring. But the essay was an easy enough topic, and Remus happened to have a full book on muggle plants being used as medicines in his trunk. However, he had a full range of healing books in his trunk, and since he had no desire whatsoever to become a healer, he thought be suspicious for the others to learn of these books. So he would have to make- do with the books he could find in the library. The library. Remus was thrilled to have such a great resource in the school, and he was pleased that he would have a chance to explore it that night after dinner while James and Sirius were in detention. Remus was a bit amazed at how quickly the two had gotten detention, only on the first day of classes. However, even in the short time that he'd known them, he could tell that they would just try to break that record for the next year.
In the short time he'd known them. That phrase scared Remus a bit, seeing as he wasn't supposed to get too close to anyone. They might guess his secret, so he was supposed to stay distant from his classmates. Yet there was something about his roommates that seemed to bring out the best side in Remus, a side that was overly- curious, and would still venture out of his safe room late at night to save a friend from the dark...
Remus shuddered as he thought that, he tried to avoid thinking of that night and anything that would remind him of it. So he quickly casted his thoughts about to a happier subject, latching onto the tutoring session he planned to have with Peter that night. Peter, it appeared, got nervous around people easily, so he was reluctant to try his spells out in class, or voice his opinions. Not that Peter had said this himself to Remus, Remus just suspected that that was the case, since he himself had similar problems. People made him nervous generally. Hopefully Peter would be able to become less flustered and more confident in his abilities, Remus didn't think that he was as stupid as Peter seemed to think he was. Peter noticed the small details, Remus thought, and he therefore would need to be careful about what he said around Peter, lest he find out the secret. Though from what Remus had noticed, Peter didn't connect the dots, so to say. He made observations, but he didn't put them together to see the big picture. So maybe Remus didn't need to be so so very careful. Well, it never hurt to be on the safe side though. Remus would have to careful with his personal life and comments on it with Peter, but really with any of his roommates. They all were very smart it would seem.
In defense against the dark arts, the class was almost a disappointment. The professor, a younger man named Professor Mant, seemed unwilling to let the first years use their wands. Several teachers seemed to hold this opinion, Remus noticed, as the only class that they had been allowed to do more than take notes so far was transfiguration, and brew an easy potion under close supervision. Remus was a bit relieved that Peter seemed to agree with potions class, since they would most likely remain partners in it for the rest of the year.
Professor Mant was having them do desk work for this lesson, they were to read the first chapter in the book and answer a question sheet about it. This was easy for Remus, due to the fact that he had read his entire textbook over the summer already, and had reread the first few chapters multiple times. It was an easy chapter, basically explaining the differences of a defensive spell, a hex, a curse, or dark magic. Remus finished less than halfway through class, and, pleased with his work, set about checking his paper. When Remus noticed that Sirius was done as well, he slid a piece of paper over to Sirius, with a game of hang-man set up on it, a little awed at his own daring. Sirius smiled and guessed the first letter, and the two played back and forth, Sirius trying to guess "inhabitant", until Professor Mant stood above their desk.
"Gentlemen?" He said, softly since the rest of the class was still working. Remus froze, he wasn't sure if they were allowed to be doing that, and didn't want to get on the professor's bad side in the first class. Sirius however, had no qualms about speaking to him.
"Yes sir?" Sirius replied. Remus couldn't quite tell if he had used a bit of sarcasm with sir or not, and apparently the professor couldn't either. The professor's narrowed at it, but appeared to be deciding to let it go.
"Is your work done?" He asked.
"Yes sir. " Remus said softly, finally having found his voice again. The professor looked surprised to hear that, and Sirius gave Remus an encouraging smile. "Would you like us to turn them in?"Remus continued.
Professor Mant nodded, and took their papers, frowning slightly since the rest of the class was not even halfway done. At the end of class, after collecting the rest of the papers, he called them both up to his desk.
"How did you finish so quickly? I graded both of your papers, they are both completely correct."
"Photographic memory, sir." Sirius said, flashing a bright grin at him. The professor looked a bit skeptical of this fact, but the evidence was right before him, so he nodded and turned to Remus.
"I've already read the book a few times sir." Remus said, his cheeks blushing, and his voice soft and nervous.
The professor just looked amused as this fact then, and nodded. "Very well then. I continue to expect excellent work from you then, um.."
"Sirius Black!" Sirius said, glad that they weren't getting in trouble. Well, glad that Remus wasn't getting in trouble.
"Yes, Mr. Black, and.."
"Remus Lupin, sir." There was a flash of recognition in the man's eyes, and Remus realized that all of his teachers must have been informed of it. To his credit though, the man didn't look scared. He simply looked a bit wary, and more aware of why Remus would have read the book so many times already. The book, after all, was called "Dark Magic and Creatures, an Introduction to the Defenses".
~Cesso~
History of magic was boring, to put it simply. Peter kept fidgeting the whole class, unable to fall into the stupor that resulted in sleep, like every other student in the room. With Remus and some Gryffindor girl being the only exceptions, they both seemed to be the studious kind. Peter's eyes cast around the room, hoping to grab onto something, anything to give him something to do, distract him from this monotonous lesson. But Peter couldn't find anything, and Remus was taking notes. Notes! Actual notes for this balderdash! Peter had listened for about the first ten minutes of class, but it had scared him out of his wits. The professor, a ghost non the less, had droned on about wars and rebellions, and friends in disguise. Peter was terrified to hear about this all, he wanted to hear about a nice safe world, where he didn't worry about people coming after him every minute. So for the rest of the lesson he resolved to only listen to the teacher's voice, and tone of voice. He wouldn't listen to a single word he said. No.
Perhaps, though, these wars weren't real. Maybe they were just made up stories that someone thought it would be funny to scare students with, another part of Peter's head said. Peter wondered if everyone argued with themselves in their head, and deciding that he must just be crazy, decided that he would watch the flying lessons that had just started taking place outside, that he could see from the window. Why anyone would hold flying lessons with a handful of first years right beside a large tower was beyond Peter, but he gladly took the distraction as it was given to him.
The people outside were Ravenclaws, and were most defiantly the smart group, not the brawny. Only three of the ten or so people had successfully grabbed his(her? Peter couldn't see quite that far) broom, and only one was able to ride it without falling off immediately. So far. Maybe they would get better. Peter worried though, what if he turned out to be one of those kids? The kids who couldn't even get the broom to go up?
Maybe flying wasn't real though. After, he had never flown before, so it could still be made up for all he knew. This was, after all, a magic school. Who was to say that the window wasn't enchanted for bored students or something? So he cast the thoughts of flying badly aside, there was still a possibility that it didn't even exist, so he had no need to worry. So he quickly cast all thoughts of flying in general away as well, and turned resolutely away from the window.
"James" Peter hissed, poking his drowsy friend in the arm.
"Hu-awwhh?" James replied, his question evolving into a yawn. The heat in this room was impressive, especially since everywhere else in the castle, and outside even, was very nice weather, with a good temperature. The heat just seemed to add to the misery of this class though.
"I'm bored." Peter said, his tone beginning to whine a little bit.
"Great. So am I. Wanna play tic-tac-toe?" At Peter's eager nod, James grinned, and drew a board on his sheet of parchment, labelled with the date and subject. Apparently James had planned to take notes, before he learned what a dull class it was.
Peter won ten games out of the twelve they played, and James remarked that he was impressed. Peter swelled with pride at that comment, and gratefully stretched as class was dismissed.
"By the way," Peter said, as they stood up to leave, "why is Sirius' hair purple?"
After dinner, James and Sirius had detention, so they gleefully departed for that, while Peter and Remus made off to the library to practice spells and go over homework. Peter was eager to try the match and needle spell thing again, he thought he might be better at it now that he wasn't feeling the pressure of the rest of the class. Although most of the class hadn't done very well either, James and Sirius and Remus had all done well, so Peter felt the need to compare. Remus also said that he would help Peter with the herbology essay, since Remus knew the most about that kind of stuff. Even though Peter hadn't grown up in the pure wizardry homes like James and Sirius had, Peter still was generally unfamiliar with most muggle concepts.
After about a half hours worth of practice, Peter was finally able to make real progress on his match. It was completely silver, and the tip of it was more sharp that a normal match. He was pleased with the progress, and he held it up for Remus to see with a large grin. Remus however, had his head down on the table.
"Remus?" Peter ventured to ask. He was glad that he had though, since Remus immediately lifted his head up and looked around in surprise. Good, at least his friend wasn't dead or something. That would be awful. Having friends, then them dying. Peter had never known if friends were really a true thing until he had started talking to James, and he still was fairly unsure of friendships. Who knows what can really happen in a friendship?
Remus however, was looking very pale, and Peter was worried that he might be really ill or something. What does one do with an ill friend? Should he call a teacher or something? Take Remus someplace? Or what if someone had cursed Remus ill? Would he be expected to curse that person back? Ask him how he felt though, first. Right. Maybe this was just really bad lighting, and it made everyone look ill and pale and sleepy. Maybe.
"Remus? Are you feeling ok?" Peter asked, hesitation thick in his tone.
"Yes, yes, I'm fine Peter, don't worry." Remus said, giving Peter a weak smile when he heard the panic in his voice. Peter didn't think that it looked like a real smile of his though, so he still was worried. But he supposed that if Remus had told him he was fine, he had to be fine.
"Oh, good job there Peter!" Remus said, as he noticed the half-match laying on the table, where Peter had dropped it in surprise at Remus' pale face.
"Thanks Remus! How's yours?" Peter inquired. It seemed to Peter like he was doing a lot of questioning around his new friends. But it was kind of nice having someone to care about that wasn't just your mother.
Remus looked at his match in response, he hadn't worked on it since he had almost fallen asleep it would appear.
"Right. I'll try it another time." Remus said, and he scrunched his face up in concentration. As he muttered the spell, a wisp of silver came out the end of his wand, and curled around the match. It hovered on the match for a minute, turning the match silver and beginning to turn it sharp. Then it just sort of collapsed into itself, and disappeared, as Remus lost his concentration for a second. Peter was amazed at the spell, even though his own match was further along than Remus', his wand hadn't produced such a pure silver, or as much of the smoke. Remus' spell had looked just like James' had when James had managed to transfigure his completely.
"That was great, Remus!" Peter gushed.
"Thanks Peter." Remus said with a slight grin. Remus pulled back his sleeve to look at his watch then, and frowned slightly.
"Peter, James and Sirius should be getting out of detention soon now. Do you want to head back to the dorm now to wait for them?"
"Sure," Peter agreed, "I can't wait to hear about all the awful tasks that they had to do!"
~Cese~
"REMUS! PETER!" Sirius screamed, as he and James ran back into the dorm room.
"Yes, Sirius?" Remus replied, wincing a bit at the loud voices. Peter merely looked shocked that someone could be quite so loud.
"We came up with a great idea during detention!" James yelled.
"Detention by the way? It's nothing! It's almost fun! All we had to do was scrub trophies." Sirius interjected.
"I'm glad you had fun in...detention." Remus said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. "What's this great idea?"
" A detention wall!" James yelled.
"A detention wall?" Peter repeated, clearly confused what they meant. Sirius thought it was a great idea though.
"Yeah! A detention wall! We're going to put all of our detention slips we collect over the years on a wall!" Sirius shouted. He wasn't quite sure why Peter and Remus were so hesitant to grasp this idea.
"Where will we find said wall?" Remus asked, as always, the logical one.
"Let's just pick a wall in our dorm." James said, waving lazily at the wall surrounding them.
"I like that wall." Peter said, pointing to the wall that held the door to the bathroom and the door to the stairs.
"I like that one better." Sirius didn't really though, he just wanted to disagree.
Remus groaned softly, and laid down on his bed, apparently giving up in the argument.
"No, I like Peter's wall better." James said, giving Peter a smile. "I still say we should use a different wall." Sirius said, pouting. "No you don't." Remus called from his bed. "You just want to disagree." Sirius could hardly argue with that fact, so instead he just grinned, and pulled out
his detention slip from his pocket.
"Here's the first to stick up!" James called. He already had had his slip in his hand.
"No! Here's the first!" Sirius yelled, struggling to find it in his pockets. His pockets had already managed to collect a vast variety of well... everything in the few hours since he had cleaned them out last. A quill, a roll(he had plans to eat it soon), a handful of...is that sand?, and his needle from transfiguration, his wand, a handful of beads, a few scrolls of parchment, and finally, his detention slip!
"Here it is!" Sirius called, ignoring the incredulous looks he was getting from Peter involving his pockets and their contents.
"Great!" James said. "I already got mine taped up." And he had. He had taken the opportunity of Sirius' distraction to grab his spellotape from his bag and tape his slip to the wall, grinning smugly at Sirius' saddened expression.
"Fine." Sirius replied, deciding to close the subject, as he strode over to tape his own slip up. "But I have an even better idea than the detention wall!"
"I can't wait to hear it." Remus called, his voice somewhat muffled since his face was in his pillow.
"Remus Lupin! Was that sarcasm I just heard?" Sirius called back to him, glad that these rooms were apparently soundproof since no one had noticed, or yelled at, all of the shouting.
"No. I'm never sarcastic." Remus deadpanned, face still in the pillow.
"How can you even breathe with your face in the pillow?" James asked, a puzzled look on his face.
"Well, James, you simply open your mouth, then take in air, your lungs will expand, and then oxygen is brought to your heart, where it is spread into your blood. The carbon dioxide is then-"
"Ok, ok!" James cut him off. "Great explanation! That was fascinating. Sirius, your idea?"
"Right! Let's go exploring!" Sirius said, glad that James had thought to get them back on track. Sirius himself had already forgotten what they had been talking about, despite his excellent memory.
"Exploring?" Peter sounded confused, Remus groaned into his pillow, and James looked very pleased with the idea.
"Exploring! Let's go explore the castle!" James explained.
"Remus, it's a weekend night! So you can't even protest about school! And I know that you and Peter practiced spells and did other school related stuff earlier, so don't bother protesting! Let's go! We still have an hour before curfew." Sirius added.
"Yes, but what if we get in trouble? Or we aren't allowed? What if it's past curfew, or we get get lost or...or.." Remus stuttered out, obviously trying to come up with a viable reason not to go. Sirius just found it amusing that Remus, the one who so far had the best ideas, and knew the best spells for pranking out of them all, was wary of exploring.
"I don't think that Remus is feeling very well." Peter contributed. Sirius frowned a little at that, and really looked at Remus, who had taken his head out of the pillow to look at them while he had started protesting. Remus was looking awfully pale, and he did have awfully big rings of shadows under his eyes...
"I'm fine!" Remus insisted. "I just don't want us to get into trouble! Well, more trouble." He amended.
"I don't think that we'll get into trouble." James said, and Sirius could tell that he was bluffing. He wasn't sure if Remus could detect it though.
"Well.." Remus looked hesitant, and Sirius took that moment of weakness to his full advantage.
"Great! Let's go!" And before Remus could protest, he had grabbed Remus' arm, seized Peter's hand, and pulled them out the door.
Once in the hallways, they just started roaming. And they certainly roamed, and searched, and wandered, and explored. Every time Remus went to check his watch Sirius would distract him, so Sirius really had no idea how late it was getting. All he knew is that he was having the best time in his life! Finally, after drifting down one hallway, they found a painting that giggled at them. A pear, and he just wouldn't stop laughing.
"What's so funny?" Sirius said, looking at the pear in confusion. The pear just laughed a little more though. So Sirius strode over to the pear, and started tickling it, wanting to give it a reason to last. But to his surprise, a door appeared instead.
~Cesser~
The boys opened the door, and immediately were assaulted with the heavenly scents of food. A house elf pattered over to them and asked them if they would like anything to eat. They were all a bit shocked at what they had found, and found that none of them could talk properly, even Sirius and James. Eventually, Sirius sort of nodded at the elf, and almost instantaneously they were seated at a table and being given a plate of leftovers from dinner. They all grinned at each other, perhaps a bit stupidly, as they all happily munched on treats and sandwiches. This place was a gold mine! It was only their third night at the school too, it was a huge success, the perfect kickoff to a series of nights that they would spend exploring the school. Remus even forgot to keep checking his watch, as the four stayed in the kitchen and talked, laughed loudly, and chatted with the house elves. Finally, long after curfew, when Remus fell asleep and slumped over onto his plate, James decided that it was late enough. They rose, after Sirius threw a pastry at Remus to wake him back up, and crept back to the dorm. They, of course, left with pocketfuls of pastries and biscuits though, just in case they became hungry before breakfast. Just in case. And another night at Hogwarts was ended, as the four collapsed into bed, giddy at their find and ecstatic that they had not been caught. So they of course had plans to explore the next night as well.