Caitlin Fawcett's New Vintage Shoes

or

Shenanigans Aboard the Hogwarts Express

As Lily Luna Potter boarded the train to Hogwarts, she felt an overwhelming rush of relief. It was a very different sensation, she recalled, than the one she'd felt getting on the train her first year. That year she'd been so scared, and yet so excited, because, after all, this was what she'd been waiting her whole life for, wasn't it? And now, she just felt relief. Back to school, back to the place she loved most in the whole world.

She followed Hugo to a car, and they sat down together, throwing their carry-on bags above them before heading over to the window to stick their heads out and wave goodbye to their families. She located her dad, as did everyone else on the entire platform, though both she and her father pretended not to notice. He just looked right at her. He held up the little note in his hand and nodded, a smile growing on his lips. Only the two of them knew what the note said, and only they understood what his gesture meant.

She waved at him, and her mum, and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron as the train pulled away from the station.

"Remember to write!" Aunt Hermione called to Hugo, and he blushed. He didn't need to be embarrassed, though. I mean, her parents had reminded her to write at least a thousand times over. And she would. She always did.

Once the train was on it's way, she asked Hugo if he wanted to come with her to find their friends, and he only shrugged.

"Oh, come on! Aren't you just dying to see Ellie?" He blushed again, and she commented on how easy it was to make him blush because of his classic Weasley-red hair. He scowled.

"Your hair is just as red as mine!" he said, before his scowl turned into a mischievous grin, "Besides, you only want to find Lysander." She didn't blush, however, at the name, and only smiled sweetly back.

"My hair may be just as red, but it isn't nearly as easy to embarrass me." And this was true. The girl was simply too sure of herself to ever let what others said embarrass her. She got up then, to go search the train, but before she even made it to the door, Caitlin Fawcett- one of Lily's roommates- burst into their car, positively fuming with anger.

"LILY!" she screamed, and Lily cowered back, unsure what she had done to receive such a terrifying greeting.

"Um... hi, Caitlin," Hugo said to her, but he was determinedly ignored.

"Look at what your ridiculous brother did to my SHOES!" Caitlin screeched, kicking her foot up into the air and pointing at it. Lily didn't even have to ask which brother her friend meant- that part was obvious. She examined the shoes, a once-lovely pair of strapped red Mary Jane's, which were now completely covered with horrendous splatters of sickly green and mud-brown and traffic-cone orange and dirty yellow. "My new vintage RED Mary Jane's, no less!"

Lily ignored that the words "new" and "vintage" were slightly contradictory, and directed her friend over to a seat. Caitlin, who was a young and sensitive soul, sat down then and looked like she might cry.

"Oh, Caitie, come on, it's ok," Lily told her, placing a comforting arm around her friend.

"They've done it to practically everyone on my side of the train! The second you step into your compartment your shoes get stuck to the floor and splattered with this horrendous-smelling stuff. It's horrible! You have to fix this!" Lily wondered if Caitlin meant just her shoes, or the whole prank-pulling situation. In either case, she knew what she had to do.

"There's always some kind of reversal spell on these things. I'll be right back," and with that, Lily shot to her feet and through to door of their car, off down the way Caitlin had come from. Hopefully Hugo would be alright, alone with the emotionally-unstable young witch, until she returned.

Once she got a little ways down the train, she noticed that everyone was wailing and showing their shoes to their friends, and that they were all covered with the same ugly-colored stuff as Caitlin's. And it did smell terrible. She also noticed her older cousin Lucy Weasley- newly appointed Head Girl- with her face all scrunched up and angry like it got, yelling at everyone to calm down and casting spells intended to make everything smell less like poo and vomit and more like a summer breeze. Whatever kind of magic Lucy was using, however, it was nothing compared to the strength of the spell her brother had used, and the stink raged relentlessly on.

And yes, even though he wasn't on the scene, and there wasn't any evidence that pointed specifically to him, Lily knew that it had to have been her brother James who did this. It could be no one else.

She continued to storm about the train, peering into each car, waving sweetly at some of her friends and stopping only to tell them where she was going, and where Hugo and Caitlin were. Hopefully they would all meet back there once she was done taking care of this. She finally found him in a car very close to the back, and she let herself in, positively slamming the compartment door behind her.

"James Sirius Potter!" she yelled at him, using his middle name like Mum did when she was mad. Everyone in the car, except for James, that is, looked startled by her arrival/outburst, but they got over it quick enough.

"Hullo, Lil," James' best friend Eli Davies said, smiling his charming smile and flashing his pristine teeth at her like only Eli Davies could. She was pleased that she continued to find it easier and easier to ignore Eli as she got older, though she'd had a crush on him for years. That's what she did now- ignore him. She started straight for James.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused on half the train? Lucy is just furious, not to mention everyone else!" James only smiled, completely unaffected by his sister's anger.

"It wasn't even my idea, Lil. This one was Roxy." Lily's cousin, Roxanne, smiled a falsely sweet smile at her from where she lay across from James, her head in Grayson Macmillan's lap.

"But it's not like I didn't have help," Roxy said, fixing her hazel-brown eyes pointedly on James. But neither of them looked ashamed. In fact, they looked ready to burst into laughter.

"It's not funny!" she screamed, and their smiles vanished, but only momentarily.

"Relax, Lily. I'm sorry if we ruined your shoes. It'll come off," James said, not really looking sorry.

"Probably," muttered Michael Wood from his seat next to Eli, and both James and Roxanne gave him a dirty look.

"It's not even my shoes. It's Caitlin's new vintage red Mary Jane's!" They pretended like they knew what she was talking about, and they pretended to be concerned. "I just need you to tell me the reversal spell." James laughed a little bit at this.

"You're only a third year, Lil. This is complex magic. No way you could pull it off." She just glared at him.

"Then you do it!" she yelled, thinking this was obvious. Roxanne had sat up and was now watching the scene unfold.

"No way! Do you have any idea how much work I put into this prank?" He crossed his arms, unwilling to indulge the little girl's wishes.

"I thought it wasn't even yours!"

"It wasn't my idea. Doesn't mean I didn't do any work on it."

"Please, James! I don't want Caitlin to hate me! I told her I would fix it!" Now, at this point, Lily saw two options before her: either continue to waste her breath arguing, or start crying. Lily hardly ever really cried, but this wasn't something James was aware of. Because James' one major soft spot was when his little sister started crying, and she had known this for a long time. She didn't really cry any more, but James thought she did. And that was always enough for her to get her way.

So she did it. She quivered her lip and drew in a shaky breath and started scrunching up her face. James suddenly looked worried, genuinely worried, because he knew that she was about to cry.

"Oh, Lily, no. Don't cry, please?" he pleaded with her, as she let her eyes get watery.

"You have to fix it! I don't want her to hate me!" she said in a shaky voice, letting a strategic tear fall. James sighed and got to his feet.

"No one is gonna hate you, Lily," Roxy told her, shaking her head.

"They will unless you fix it!" she said this to them both, letting a few more tears fall. The rest of their friends were watching her warily, as if she was a ticking time bomb about to explode.

"Okay, okay, take me to your friend," James relented, if only to get her to stop crying. She didn't stop right away, because that would be too obvious, but she brightened considerably once he agreed. She led him out the door by his hand, and he shrugged at his friends as she hauled him away.

"That girl's got him wrapped around her little finger," Eli said when they were almost (but not quite) out of earshot, and Roxanne nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, Lily dragged James back through the train with her. When they got to the section of the train where the havoc had been wreaked, James grinned his classic "mischievous grin," and there was a glint in his eyes that he only had when he was up to no good. They soon approached the frazzled Lucy, who was still running around trying to clean up the mess, and when she saw James she froze in place. The look she gave him probably would have killed a lesser man, one who wasn't as used to girls giving him death glares as James was. Lucy knew that he was responsible, as did most anyone else who had a clue.

"Hey, Luce," he greeted her impishly, "keep up the hard work."

"You little-" Lucy started, catching herself before she could say what she was actually thinking. That was maybe the closest that goody-two-shoes Lucy Weasley ever came to swearing. James paid her no heed, however, knowing that the most she would do to him would be give him detention- a power that she had never abused but had utilised at every available opportunity since she became a prefect her fifth year. But she couldn't even give him detention if she couldn't prove his involvement. And they both knew she couldn't.

"Later, Luce," James parted as he allowed his sister to drag him swiftly away. He cheekily winked at Lucy before turning around, and she stayed frozen in place, staring daggers into the back of his head.

When they made it back to Lily's car, all of her friends were there, including Lysander Scamander, as Lily pretended not to be acutely aware of.

"I HATE James Potter!" Caitlin was saying, staring angrily at her completely ruined new vintage shoes. She hadn't noticed Lily or her brother's entrance thus of the car.

"Sorry to hear it," James said, smiling at the young girl's shocked (and slightly mortified) expression at finding him there. "I just came to see what I could do about your shoes." All the other third years looked very intimidated by the sixth year's presence, except for Hugo, who knew his cousin well enough to not be bothered.

James walked over and kneeled down in front of the third year witch, whose small little feet didn't reach the floor of the car when she sat back on the bench. He picked up one of her feet and examined her shoe, twisting around her ankle so as to see it from all angles. All the third years watched him closely, waiting for him to make his move.

He pretended to contemplate as he withdrew his wand from his robes, tapping it on his chin. After a few more moments of "deliberation," he whispered a slow incantation and twirled his wand around her feet. With a final flick of the wrist, slowly the gunk that covered her shoes faded out of existence. Once it was gone her new vintage Mary Jane's appeared again, shiny and bright red. They were somehow even prettier than they had been before, Caitlin thought to herself. Though, of course she couldn't say this to him.

"Thank you, James," she muttered, pulling her knees up to her chest and rubbing her shoes with her thumb, to make sure they felt as nice and clean as they looked.

"Of course, Caitlin," he told her, standing up and brushing off his hands. She looked surprised that he knew her name, and she smiled shyly at him. He gave her a wink (a far more well-intentioned wink than the one he'd given his cousin Lucy just before), the rest of them a parting wave, and then turned to Lily.

"Happy now, brat?" She nodded. "I'll see you later then. Have a grand time at the feast and try not to let the Sorting Ceremony bore you." He was tempted to kiss her on the head, but thought better of it and settled on just ruffling her hair before he left.

Once he was almost out of earshot, Hugo Weasley sighed and said, "You've got that boy wrapped around your little finger, don't you?" And James and Lily both smiled, because they knew it was true.

So... that's the first chapter! I really like the idea of james being a jokester/moderate asshole/cool sixth year who the younger kids all look up to, but he's actually a really sweet, decent guy whose nice side mostly only comes out around his baby sister, who he's got a major soft spot for. Review if you liked it, and there's plenty more where these shenanigans came from (I've recently been told that no one says "shenanigans," anymore, so I've been trying to use it as much as possible). Anyway, please read on! -Maddie