Chapter Two
September First, Nineteen-Seventy-Two
The beginning of second year inevitably came, and so did the reunion at King's Cross station while waiting for the Hogwarts Express. Sirius Black had spent the last two weeks of the summer with the Potters and thankfully avoided another lecture from his mother, but immediately after coming through the barrier at Platform 9 ¾, he quite literally met the first obstacle of the year.
"Ouch!" Davie yelped as Sirius' luggage cart hit her from behind; she fell forward, but quickly steadied herself onto her feet. "Black!" she said shrilly, crossing her arms. "You know, if you would just watch where you were going, things would be so much simpler -"
"Maddux!" Sirius barked jovially, clapping her on the shoulder. "Your lisp is gone!"
"Ugh!" she said, throwing her arms up resignedly and shoving his hand away from her. Granted, he had a point - her parents had taken her to the dental specialist in Diagon Alley over the summer to correct her crooked teeth which caused the irksome speaking habit. "I won't even bother with you. Have you seen Lily?"
"I've only just arrived, do you think I've seen her?" he retorted sarcastically. "Honestly, Maddux, you can be a little thick sometimes."
"Look who's talking," she huffed, gathering up her things and stomping off toward the train. Sirius, however, stared after her for a brief moment. Perhaps she'd gotten taller. Perhaps she'd grown a bit less skinny over the summer. Whatever it was, Sirius quickly pushed it from his mind.
The first class of the year was Charms, which many students except for Davie considered their favorite. The only hitch was that Double Charms meant two hours in the same room as the Slytherins, and even worse, Flitwick had insisted that the Slytherins and Gryffindors pair off together.
"Who in their right mind would let Slytherins and Gryffindors practice spells on one another?" Davie asked in a scandalized voice. She, however, was paired off with a sandy-haired Slytherin boy by the name of Romnic Digby who was in fact, quite handsome. She shot Lily an apologetic smile before going to join her partner, glimpsing the look of pure disdain on Sirius' face when he was paired off with Severus Snape, who appeared to have been edging towards Lily. His expression fell.
Professor Flitwick quickly set them to task of practicing Engorgement Charms, which they were supposed to be aiming towards bright, multicolored pincushions held by their partners. Romnic turned out to be a surprisingly skittish boy, flinching and dropping the pincushion whenever Davie aimed the spell at him.
"You need to stop going that or I'm going to end up hitting you, and it won't be my fault," Davie huffed, tapping her foot impatiently. Sirius, however, heard her comment and seemed more than amused. She shot a glance at James who was situated a bit of a way across the room. Davie didn't notice them and simply continued with Romnic, who was quite embarrassed by being chided by the small girl - it must have been enough to pull his act together, as they quickly managed to engorge their pincushions to take up the whole table. Flitwick immediately skittered over to them, praising them loudly. While Flitwick's back was turned, both Sirius and James wheeled on Snape and hurled an Engorgement Charm at him, hitting him straight on the face. One spell would have been easy enough to reverse, but two was a slightly different matter.
Snape's jaw immediately began to swell at an alarming rate, quickly becoming too big for his face. Lily gave a squeal of alarm as he stumbled around uncontrollably, losing his balance and falling on top of Davie, who made a sound halfway between a scream and a grunt as she hit the grunt.
"Im-Impedimenta!" Davie said, squirming out from under Snape and pointing her wand at his jaw - the growth slowed, though not stopping completely. Snape looked at her in surprise. Flitwick sent him to the Hospital Wing and instructed Davie to make sure he arrived safely; they were gone before they could even hear what James and Sirius would receive as punishment.
As luck would have it, however, Madam Pomfrey was quite overrun that day already with nearly twenty First Year students from flying lessons - a dozen broken legs and arms and noses, and a few more bumped heads and missing teeth were more than enough to keep Madam Pomfrey occupied.
"Here," she said, pulling a few bottles out of the cupboard and placing them onto a nearby table as Snape sat down on one of the infirmary carts. "You spend plenty of time with Miss Evans, so I'm sure you know how to handle the situation. I do hope she's rubbed off on you at least a little bit."
Davie gave a quiet harrumph as Madam Pomfrey left and uncorked some of the containers and poured the contents into a mortar and pestle, creating a mustard-colored, minty-smelling paste. She dabbed her middle and index fingers on both hands into it, looked down at it with a grimace, then looked back at Snape. "I'm afraid you'll have to sacrifice your personal space for a short while," she said matter-of-factly, tossing her head to one side to move her thick pigtails out of the way. With heavy apprehension, she reached forward, spreading the paste onto Severus' jaw, which, after a bit of kneading, slowed in growth and gradually began to shrink.
"There," Davie said, wiping her hands on the rag on the counter. She gave a small, self-satisfied smile. "Now we need to wait and make sure it doesn't start blowing up like a balloon again."
Snape blinked at the girl - they'd never really met properly, even though they were aware of one another's names. All he really knew about her was that she was Lily's best friend, and, in his opinion, a little less pretty and a little less smart. She was little bit like Lily's shadow. But in any case, he had noticed that since they started school, there had been distance developing between himself and Lily, and possibly, being on amiable terms with this girl would help maintain a link to Lily.
"Severus Snape," he said suddenly, his voice still slightly muffled as his jaw had not gone completely back to normal. Davie raised an eyebrow at him - it was certainly an awkward move introducing himself now, of all times and places, when they'd been attending the same school for over a year at this point.
"Davina Maddux," she replied with a small laugh, clicking her tongue as was her habit. "Are you going to be alright? I really ought to get back to class, Charms is my worst mark and I don't really want to -"
"I can manage," Severus said shortly. Davie gave him a small laugh, reaching out and grabbing his hand amiably - there was nothing behind the gesture except for Davie's friendly nature, often child-like in warmth and trust. To Severus Snape, however, who had no real close friends to speak of apart from Lily, it was an entirely foreign gesture.
"I'm sure you can," she grinned before letting go of his hand, walking out of the room; Snape was at a loss for how on Earth anyone could be so chipper. She must have been, he thought, either incredibly kind or completely daft.
As the school term progressed, the four boys, who had now taken to calling themselves the Marauders, became even more incorrigible in their pranks on the Slytherins. Davie had expected Remus to perhaps be the voice of reason among them, to no avail. One evening, when the girls were up late quizzing one another on the uses of Mandrakes, the Marauders strode through down the spiral staircase in their usual , haughty fashion.
"It's nearly eleven," Davie said matter-of-factly, glancing over towards Lily to try and judge her reaction ahead of time. "Where are you all going?"
"To the kitchens," James nodded nonchalantly. "We're hungry."
"You're all so thick," Lily said, rolling her eyes. "Do you even have any idea what might happen -"
"No need to worry about me, Evans," James said with a broad grin, which only elicited more annoyance from the auburn-haired girl. "If we get caught, I'll send you an owl from detention hall -"
"Remus!" Davie whined, looking at the other boy for the first time during the conversation - Remus was their only hope, considering Peter Pettigrew would never in a million years contradict anything James Potter said was correct. "Talk some sense into your friends, would you?"
"I'm sure it'll be fine - no more than ten minutes," he shrugged nonchalantly. While he was certainly not as cocky as the other boys, he was no less mischievous.
"Tell you what, Maddux - you let this go, and I'll bring you back a whole pound of fudge," Sirius chimed in knowingly - and Davie's expression immediately wavered. She had a terrible sweet tooth, and had a penchant for swiping fudge from Lily's' dessert plates during dinner. She couldn't resist.
"S-sorry, Lily," she said bashfully, casting her best friend an apologetic glance. When Lily realized that she was suddenly very much alone in this argument, she huffed, simply looking away from everyone.
"You're such a weakling, you know that?" Lily pointed out to Davie after the boys had left - Davie sighed. Iwhile she was happy to be friends with someone of such outstanding moral character, but at the same time, living up to having Lily Evans as a best friend was no easy task. "Honestly. Fudge!"
Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty. The boys still hadn't returned. Finally, after about half an hour, the portrait hole sprang open. The girls turned, only to find not only the boys, but Professor McGonagall as well. Davie grimaced.
"That," she said in a clearly annoyed voice, "ought to teach you boys not to wander the corridors at night!"
"Twenty points," Peter groaned in dismay after McGonagall had left.
"Each!" Sirius interjected. Lily looked livid, but at the same time, a bit pleased with herself for being right.
"That's eighty points," Lily said, shaking her head. "That's all of the points I just won for us in Professor Slughorn's class today!"
"Oh well," Sirius chuckled, earning a very severe glare from her. Unscathed, he strode over to Davie, dropping a clumsily closed package of cellophane into her lap. Just one whiff confirmed that it was, in fact, fudge. "Just as promised. I'm a man of my word after all," Sirius chuckled.
"I don't forgive you," Davie snapped in response in order to appease Lily, but it was too late. The corners of the dark-haired girl's lips had already curled themselves halfway into a grin.
The next day at breakfast, the boys had all sat together, fully expecting their Howlers when Owl Post arrived. Davie jokingly brought a pair of earmuffs, tossing them toward Sirius who had been in his seat no more than five minutes before a large grey owl dropped a bright red envelope in front of him.
James, however, did not receive the same thing - instead of the telltale red envelope, a somewhat messily wrapped package was dropped into his lap. The boys all stared amongst one another, then stood up, rushing back to the common room - the girls were still too irritated with them to even bother following.
"An Invisibility Cloak!" Peter squealed.
"Have I ever mentioned how much I love your parents? D'you think you could adopt me?" Sirius asked, prodding James in the back. "We could have used one of those last night."
"Yeah, imagine all the fudge you could have brought back," Remus mused impishly. Sirius shot him a glance, but he made no move to elaborate. James, however, wanted to have a bit more fun with his best friend.
"You know, I never thought Davie liked fudge that much, did you?" he laughed. "Well, you probably did."
"You two," Sirius said, pointing at his two friends, "are thinking something that I don't think you ought to be thinking, because whatever I think of Davie, it's not anything even similar to what you think I'm thinking."
"Huh," Peter said, brow furrowing. "Too much thinking in one sentence -"
"Peter, really, I don't know how you can be so slow. They think I fancy Davie!" Sirius said with an exaggerated, raucous laughed. "And I certainly don't - she's short, and loud, and always wears her hair in those absurd braids."
"Alright, then," James said nonchalantly. Remus simply masked a smile.
In any case, with the use of their new Invisibility Cloak, the boys very quickly managed to find numerous secret passages in the castle during their nighttime escapades which the girls not did not even know they were taking. In particular, Sirius was amused with a secret passage hidden in the hump of a rather ugly witch statue - it led to the cellar of the Honeydukes Sweet Shop in Hogsmeade. It also became a regular happening for Davie to find packages of fudge being delivered to her by an anonymous school owl in the mornings.
"Don't eat it! It could be poisoned!" Lily would always warn, but Davie was beyond the point of being able to listen. "If you end up in the infirmary, then it'll be too late."
"They haven't been poisoned yet," Davie mused one day. "And if I find out who's sending me these, I might just marry them."
September First, Nineteen-Seventy-Three
"Mum, please," Davie pleaded desperately as her mother tried pulling her out of the Muggle car they had borrowed to transport them to King's Cross Station. " Mum! I don't want to get out of the car!"
"Davina, you're being silly," Celesta said, trying to mask her amusement at her daughter. She remembered what it was like, being thirteen - she had been very much the same, a bit slower to physically develop than some other girls, and it was a strange feeling for a young girl to feel so different from the people around her. "You're overreacting, it's not terrible."
"I look like a stick bug, mum," she brooded, finally conceding and stepping hesitantly out, eyeing her surroundings warily. "I don't want to go - maybe I can just go back to being tutored at home. I can stay at home and no one needs to -"
"Darling, there's nothing abnormal about how you look," Celesta pointed out, helping Davie pull her trunk out of the back of the car. Her father, Emerson, stepped out of the driver's side, clucking his tongue at his daughter, who pouted at him in response.
"You're still my lovely little girl," he laughed, taking the luggage out of his wife's hands and bringing his daughter through the barrier, onto Platform 9 ¾. "You're just getting taller. It's normal. You should have seen your mother when we were still in school. You could clean a drainpipe with her-"
"Emerson!"
"- but look at her now!" Emerson Maddux quickly recovered. "She's absolutely ravishing!"
Davie looked down at herself and grimaced, feeling quite doubtful. She had gotten considerably taller over the summer, and in turn, quite a bit skinnier. She was actually… quite one-dimensional. While other girls her age were blossoming, she was just becoming more of a twig. Her mother had already let down the hem of her skirt to accommodate the change in her height, but to Davie, it was still too close for comfort.
When she arrived on the train, the inches Davie had grown over the summer did one not for one minute evade Lily's notice. Davie refused to even stand up straight, trying to allow her pleated skirt to fall lower and closer to her knees, insisting that she looked completely indecent.
Wanting genuinely to help her friend get her wits about her, Lily suggested that they take a walk - this, however, would not turn out to be the best of ideas. If anything, she felt quite a bit worse when they passed by a compartment occupied by Slytherins, and Romnic Digby gave Davie an appreciative once-over.
Furious, Davie stormed off before Lily had even had the chance to catch up. The only idea that came to Davie's mind was to go to the compartment that was normally occupied by the only people she believed would not give a damn. This was, she told herself, the only time she would go looking for the Marauders.
They, too, however, were not immune to noticing that Davie looked considerably different. Peter, the smallest of them by far, looked on in obvious confusion - they had always been about the same height, and now, even she had grown a bit taller than him.
"Where'd you get the stilts?" James laughed, elbowing the girl playfully. "Have you seen Evans around yet?" Remus simply shot Sirius a glance, smirking knowingly as his friend's grey eyes seemed confused between being shocked and - was it possible? - impressed. This, he decided, was going to be very strange indeed.
A/N
This chapter was a little bit scattered, now that I reread it - but this is one of the points in the story where I take a little artistic liberty because I wrote the story before some things were revealed in the books. Namely, in this story, the boys become Animagi in fourth year rather than fifth year among other things. I'm also working on changing the ending possibly, even though it's already written, but I would need to change some foreshadowing written into the story. And, of course, this is just me rambling on with nothing important to say, but suffice it to say that even though this story is technically finished on my end, I'm still glad to call it everchanging.
Jokegirl, my first reviewer! I always love my first reviewer, hee. Thanks for your review! I actually went through and did a couple of minor edits on the first chapter to help it stay at least slightly in tune with things that came out up to DH - mostly just adding references in. I was just really thankful that there was a Snape/Lily friendship already written into my first draft, or else this story would have completely missed the mark!
It's always so hard to get reviews in the HP fandom, so many other stories to compete with. But to anyone who has taken a look, thanks very kindly! Cheers!