Date Posted: 24th July 2010

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

"Focus. Focus!" urged Helga and Salazar, "Find your magic core! Remember that warm tingly feeling and find it! You can do it! You've done it millions of times before. Find it and embrace!"

James closed his eyes and concentrated on finding his magic core. He remembered all the times he used his magic - yes, his magic; his and no one else's. In less than a few seconds, he relocated his bubbly fountain of magical energy. He embraced it; his wonderful benevolent magic - he loved that...that comforting sense of belonging.

Salazar and the rest of the Founders felt a spike in his magical aura and continued their instructions.

"Now, channel it to your hands, to the materials in your hands. Your magic is a part of you, it is not your slave but your friend. It is alive, it's sentient and it has feelings. Ask it to help you make the necklace; channel your magic into them."

An eerie magical aura encased James, illuminating the dim shadows.

"Feel the materials in your hand - every gem, and bit of silver and gold. Channel your magic into them, don't force it, but gently accept it, encompass it with your magic. Fuse your magic with the materials; make them one; unify them!"

Beads of sweat were starting to build on James forehead in effort to manipulate his magic.

"Bend it to your will, the materials, your magic; will it to take shape. Imagine what you want the necklace to look like. Focus on what it looks like; how it should feel; what purpose it's for. Impress your thoughts into it!" instructed Helga.

James thought of it all. The silver chain; the gold, both white and normal gold, molded into a gem studed heart-shaped pendant; the tiny crystal bottle of phoenix tears inside the gold pendant; the seven little gemstones; agate, amethyst, jasper, black onyx, bloodstone, carnelian and sodalite, each with it's own symbolic meaning (which is written at the bottom of this chapter). He remembered all his times with Lily and why he wanted to protect her. He impressed all this emotions and thoughts into the materials and his magic. It was difficult, but he couldn't give up.

"You can do it! It may be hard now, but so was the first time you practiced wandless magic and now you can do it without batting an eye. It is possible! Believe in yourself."

With his reinforced determination, he sent a powerful bout of magic into the materials. It was after this last wave of stong magic, he collapsed from fatigue, panting heavily, holding a beautiful heart-shaped necklace in his hands.

"You did great!" congratulated all the Founders.

"For a first time at this, you sure are good at it. If you have time, maybe you could give one to all your close friends so they will be safe too," suggested Bell.

"Yes, that would be highly advantageous," voiced Sal.

"Now, don't forget, your necklace has yet to be complete. You have moulded it and embedded it with your magic as well as interlaced it with some pretty powerful protection with those stones, in fact, it could almost be classified as a ritual," R'ena added on a second thought, "But you are aiming for a perfect job, and in order to do that, you need a fair few more charms and possibly other rituals to perfect it. And of course, there is only one way to do that," she immediately bubbled with happiness like a little kid with ice-cream, "Read!"

"I swear you're almost like Lily when it comes to reading. You two could be wonderful friends," said James. All three other Founders and James were shaking their heads at Rowena who was giddy with excitement, clapping her hands like a two year old - and we always think of her as the mature one. Guess there's no keeping Row from her books is there?

"Ahem," Sal finally coughed, unable to take any more of her juvenility.

Row blushed from her kiddish spell.

"It's alright, we're used to it," comforted Bell.

"Hard not to be after being practically next to each other 24/7 hours a day for the past 2000 years," snidely commented 'Ric.

"Yes well, at least I'm not a brash lion, unlike somebody, not mentioning any names," retorted R'ena.

"I take offense to that! I should be treated like a God!"

"For the thousandth time 'Ric," exasperated Sal, "We're not shortening your name Godric to God. It's too intelligent for you!"

"I'm much intelligent!"

"I'll believe that when you get your grammar correct," Bell rolled her eyes.

"Bell! How could you? I always thought you were the nicest and always on my side even if these two bastards teamed up against me!"

"Now, now 'Ric. What have I told you about calling your two bestfriends names?" said Helga in a motherly fashion.

"That it's not nice and I shouldn't do so," he sulked, "but they teamed up against me first!"

"Regardless, they are correct," she began to laugh, "There's no chance in all the universe that we are ever going to call you God; 'Ric suits you just fine," she said with a tone of finality.

Godric relented, knowing no one would ever win an argument with Bell's motherly side.

"Now, before we I was distracted by Mr. I-Think-I'm-Divine over there, I was about to tell you to go to my personal library in my office. You'll find plenty of books there for your protection charms. In fact, there should be a whole section just about protection charms."

"Thanks R'ena. I'll go maybe later today. Bye," he said.

"I'll see you in my office then. Have a nice day. Bye!"

"See you later," said Bell and Sal, but 'Ric had to say, "Catchya later dude!"

"Bye guys. Er...bye 'Ric..."

And with that, he opened the door that connected the lounge to the Armour Gallery and headed to the Great Hall for breakfast.

"Hey Prongs!" called Padfoot from the breakfast table in the Great Hall, "Where were you this morning? You were up before Remus!"

"I was just in the lounge talking to the Founders," I said sitting next to him, before changing my mind to sitting across from him after noticing the stares of much of the hall.

It was all because of the incident the morning after Hogsmeade. I inwardly laughed at Remus' and Sirius' dilemma. Till this day, even a week after, guys, girls and more guys were hanging around them more often than ever; usually flirting or winking at them. On the second day Remus even squealed in the corridors on his way to his next class when one of the guys felt his arse up.

I am also shocked to announce that Sirius hasn't snogged or shagged a girl since the incident and has been instead, living in fear of homosexual guys for the past week (A/N - I meant no offense to homosexuals). This may have something to do with the incident in the boys lavatory the day after the speech; no-one really knows what happened in there that caused him to scream loud enough to be heard all the way in the herbology greenhouse, but whatever it was, he has stopped using the boys lavatory, instead opting the private one all the back in his own dorm. One can only guess.

The entire school had yet to forget about the speech even a week after it's delivery. Moony and Padfoot haven't sat near each other since, not wanting to be mistaken for doing...whatever gay guys do when they site next to each other at the hormone raging age of 15 - use your imagination.

"Prongs! Not you too!" he complained.

"Sorry mate, but even I have a reputation to keep. I'm already under enough scrutinisation as it is, with being your dorm mate and turning down every girl other than Lily that asks me out. I don't want rumours about me being gay to start; listening to ones about you aren't any encouragement either. Did you know you two married last year against the consent of your parents and had your wedding in the forbidden forest and Hagrid was the minister, with the centaurs and other creatures of the forest as your guests? I even heard an extension of it where you stayed and performed 'nightly activities' in the forest with some of the creatures to fit your bestiality fetish you mentioned at the end of your speech. If those are the rumours I'm going to be hearing about myself just by sitting next to you, I'd rather not."

"Firstly, I TOTALLY deny ANY of that happening! Secondly, it wasn't my speech! Alice and Euphie wrote it and forced us to read it in front of the whole school for losing a bet! I would never condemn myself to such fate if I had a choice!"

"If you did that on your own free will, I'd send you to the mind ward in St. Mungos. But either way, I'm not sitting next to you."

"So you're just going to ditch your bestfriend because of some rumours?" he asked.

"Sorry mate," I apologised as I continued to move a couple of seats away from him, "There's no way in hell you can make me sit next to you - bestfriend or not."

"Please," he practically begged, "No-one sits with me anymore!"

"No can do. Sorry."

Sirius reacted by dramatically cracking the knuckles in his fists and gesturing towards the seat next to him, "If you don't come, I'll pound you so hard, you'll be sore and limping around Hogwarts for a whole week."

I know what he meant, but that sentenced, from what I see, can be interpreted in two ways. Normally, listeners would interpret it as way number one, an insult and threat to beat your friend up. But because of recent happenings and rumours, it seems to have affected peoples' interpretation of whatever comes out of Sirius' mouth.

So if I told you, all the teachers were blushing at what was just said, all the gays were winking at Sirius and all the yaoi/slash fangirls were squealing in their fantasies (probably featuring Sirius and I), how do you reckon Sirius' short dialogue was interpreted?

(A/N - If you don't get the second way two interpret Sirius' sentence then you still have some innocence left in you. Either that, or you don't know the second meaning of the word 'pound'.)

Sirius seemed to notice the halls reaction too, because the moment he realised what was going on he said, "Oh fuck this is great! Just fucking great!"

That certainly didn't help things.

What can I say? Ambiguity's a bitch.

...and Sirius sucks at sarcasm.

"Hey Lils," I greeted Lily.

"Hi James," she replied. She was getting much more comfortable at the use of my first name for the past weeks. We were now on regular first name bases and could interact without arguing or her trying to hex me. Much more to my taste.

"Do you mind if I sit next to you? Next to Sirius isn't exactly the best place right now."

"Sure no problems," she smiled back. A couple of weeks ago, I would have had a heart attack if she smiled at me.

"Have you done your Transfiguration essay yet?" Just trust Lily to talk about homework less than 30 seconds into a conversation. What's worse, was that I was used to it - bit hard not to after...10 years? of being friends.

"Yeah. I used, Wimble's Wizarding World Wonder: Transfiguration, I think the book was called."

"Same here! It was the only decent book left in the Library. It was so hard to find any books from the library because everyone else borrowed them already, and we can't duplicate it with geminio because of the stupid runes on the book, otherwise no one would buy the books and just duplicate them!"

Thus why the muggles invented the internet. We use a search engine, whilst other ignorant magical folk have to flip through page by page. Thank the Great God Google! (A/N - he's a bit used to refering to himself in a muggle manner)

I never had trouble with not having a book on a subject. R'ena's personal library had a copy of everything. It was self-updating, so every time a new book was published it would go to a 'pending' section of her library and then she would read it to see if it was worthy of a place on her prestigious shelves. I had to help her with that. Portraits could no longer do magic, so she couldn't use her hands or magic to allow her to read. She, Remus and I worked together to make a spell that would allow her access to any of the books in her library. The books just magically appeared in her portrait as if it was part of her painting.

"Lily, are you boring another victim with your homework chatter again?" came Euphie. Alice was sitting with Frank today.

"Hi Mia," I greeted.

"Hey, James," she chorused.

Since I was no longer the mortal enemy of Lily, she and Alice had started calling me by my first name as well.

"So...may I sit here, or would I be interrupting you two lovebirds?" teased Euphie.

"For the thousandth time Mia, we aren't like that," sight Lily.

"Our relationship is simply that of friends."

"Right James. If I recall, it was less that a month ago you were asking Lily out and begging for her to, I dunno...let's just say, 'give you the light of day' shall we?" Euphie couldn't help but snicker at her 'discreet' reference, whilst James and Lily looked at her weirdly for laughing for no reason.

"Anyway, if you have nothing more important to say, you interrupted our conversation about the Library," said Lily.

"So you were boring someone's brains out! I knew it! Lily can't help but ramble on about something nerdy for more than 30 seconds into a conversation - I should know; I am a poor victim myself," she said dramatically - such a drama queen.

"...Yes Mia, I'm sure it's very painful," Lily rolled her eyes.

Lily really doesn't know how boring her talks about anything educational can be. What's worse is that I'm used to it.

I shook my head and sighed. Deja vu. I reckon I've said or heard that sentence about three times already, if not more. Be with a person for 10 years and you can get used to anything.

"So James, how's life without Lily trying to kill you every second of the day?"

"Er...Alive?"

Good! Now you can ask her to the Halloween Ball next week!"

"Mia! How many times have I told you that having a partner is not compulsory? What if James already had a partner to the dance? You can't just say something like that to someone outright; it's highly impolite!"

"See? She's already taking your side. A week or two more and you guys can be off to Gretna Green!" she cheered as she hummed Wedding March.

"Mia!" Lily gasped, "Are you implying that James and I would elope to marry?"

"Maybe, maybe not," she answered cheekily.

"Well I'll have you know,that there is NO possibility of that happening. If I were to marry some one, firstly, it would be official. Secondly, I wouldn't marry James - ever!"

Ouch.

"Yes, Lils. We'll believe it when we see it."

"Either ways-" Euphie started.

"That's improper grammar. It would be just 'either way'," corrected Lily.

"Either ways," she emphasised her act of rebellion, "see you two together at the ball!" she winked mischievously. That little minx is definitely hiding something.

I'll get to the bottom of this.

Meaning of the gemstones used in the necklace:

Agate - Considered a protection stone. It is believed to attract strength and offer protection from bad dreams, stress and the draining of energy. Agate is said to balance energies and awaken talents.

Amethyst - The healer from antiquity, healing for the soul, body and mind.

Jasper - Is associated with relaxation, contentment, compassion, nurturing and consolation. Jasper is said to relieve mental stress and help you achieve balance in your life.

Black Onyx - Protection, energy shield.

Bloodstone - Warrior stone for overcoming obstacles, calm ones fears of a real or perceived enemy.

Carnelian - To ward off evil thoughts, jealousies, animosities, and psychic attacks [legilmency maybe?] toward the individual, inspires bravery and courage.

Sodalite - Healing of emotions and physical body.

I am not an expert in this kinda stuff and I personally don't really believe in it, so if this isn't what the stones actually mean, don't blame me; I just copied it off the internet.

Sorry if the chapter was a bit lacking at the end. I had a writers block for a long time on what James' and Lily's conversation would be like, that's why it took me longer to update than usual.

I still reckon I update at a reasonable pace. Some of my favourite stories take ages to update even though the chapters might be very short. I might take about a week to update a chapter because I have school and tests and everything (as much as I love taking Jap at school, the tests still suck). But I'm sure you can wait, it's only a week after all, not months.

My dad is also against me 'wasting' my time to write ffs because he reckons I should be using my time to study etc and write stories of higher literature. He has a point, but I don't care am and continuing to write anyways.

Anyways, here's a header for the next chapter - the Halloween Ball of course!

I have actually written another chapter for a Quidditch match that I was going to post as chapter 14, but decided against it and thought that there should be more events in between the speech and the match so I am putting this chapter and Halloween between them.

Have yet to write the Halloween Ball though, but have a feint outline as to what it's content will be.

I'll try to update ASAP.

Remember people,

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