With three extra subjects, midterms was just that much more stressful. The night before the beginning of exams, Marlene, Dorcas, Alice, and I had forsaken dinner and instead settled our growling stomachs with our collaborated stash of junk food: five bars of white chocolate raspberry and dark chocolate blueberry, a deluxe packet of Pumpkin Pasties, a handful of Creamy Custards, a couple Chocolate Frogs, some Cherry Tarts, and a few buttered English muffins, courtesy of Evanna Weasley, a sweet friend of Lily's and Alice's. Evanna had originally taken to Lily because they shared the same flaming ginger hair color.
Marlene groaned, laying on her back. "I'll never understand this! Why wouldn't you just tap your wand twice? What's with the damn spiral?"
"Shhh…" Dorcas shushed, her eyebrows knitted together as she frantically scribbled on paper. Marlene shot Dorcas an annoyed look but remained silent. Too quiet. Silence was never good with Marlene. I peeked over my Potions textbook and sure enough, just ten minutes later, she was fast asleep.
I gently poked her with my quill. No response.
"Marlene," Alice said softly, trying to wake her up without distracting Dorcas.
"Marlene!" I spoke loudly.
Marlene groaned and turned away, still asleep.
Dorcas looked down at Marlene, sighed, and rolled up her sleeves, brandishing her wand.
"Right then, perfect opportunity to practice for the practical Charms exam, yes?"
"Dorcas, what-?" I started to say, but Dorcas hushed me before saying loudly, with great focus, "Wingardium Leviosa!"
Marlene woke with a shriek as she was levitated a few feet off the ground, floundering about wildly. About half the common room paused to watch the spectacle.
Alice leapt to her feet, startled, ready to catch Marlene if she fell.
I was too busy rolling on the floor, laughing.
As a consequence, when Dorcas dropped Marlene, Marlene landed with a loud thump! right on top of me.
"Ow!" I groaned, pinned under her.
"What is going on?" Lily appeared with a platter of chicken pot pies, looking utterly confused, "You said you guys were studying!"
"Well, we got a bit carried away with studying Levitation, that's all," Dorcas commented smoothly.
"Lily, you're an angel!" Alice said, taking a pie. "Thank you! I was starving."
Marlene got up with a huff and turned to Dorcas, "That was over the line!"
"Wasn't it?" Dorcas replied cheekily. "I thought your weight was going to cause my wand to break."
Marlene scowled, but couldn't help but laugh a little.
I finally pulled myself up from the floor, nursing my hip and arm and whimpered, "I thought I was going to break."
Marlene slapped my back stoutly. "Don't be an insensitive imp."
Lily shook her head as she joined us with her books. We all resumed studying, keeping each other awake, motivating each other to do our best.
In preparation for my Ancient Runes exam, I pulled out the book I'd gotten from the young boy at Hogsmeade. When I'd translated the title, it read, "The Tales of Beedle the Bard."
"Okay," I said, laying the quill down on top of the table, "you just wave your wand over it, tap the quill directly- and say, um, what was it? Oh, right, edera vertira."
It was a dusky afternoon and Zayne Finnigan and I were in library in a quiet corner, practicing Transfiguration spells.
"All right." Zayne rolled up his sleeves with a determined look on his face. "Ready? One, two, three." He waved his wand, tapped the quill, and said, "Edera vertira".
The quill slowly dissolved, as though melted, revealing a simple light gray feather in its place.
"Well done!" I said, smiling.
Zayne returned my smile but then frowned as he looked closer at the feather. "Um…does that look a bit dark to you?"
"What?" I asked, peering down at it as well.
"It's darker towards the end of the feather. Look, I think it's turning black," Zayne pointed to the tail of the feather and sure enough, its end was turning a seared charcoal black, letting off a small wisp of smoke. Smoke!?
The end of the feather immediately burst into flames and Zayne and I both pushed ourselves away from the table as fast as possible.
"Oh Merlin!" I shouted. McGonagalll wasn't around to save our skins this time.
"Ag-Aguamenti!" Zayne shouted but the spell, which was a higher-level fourth year spell anyways, was unsuccessful.
"Put it out, you fool! Put it out!" I shouted, looking around for something, anything.
Zayne tried to blow it out but the flame over grew higher and engulfed the whole feather.
"Oh", he said apprehensively. "That's not a good sign."
"Get out of the way!" I finally said, grabbing a book from a nearby shelf and stamping out the fire. It disappeared in a matter of seconds.
We both looked at each other breathlessly and just started to relax when Madam Pince, the librarian, ran over to us furiously. Her nostrils were flaring as she brandished her wand.
"What in the name of- What are you holding, girl?" she asked me. Her eyes were a dangerous mood and her lips were thin.
"A book?" I said meekly.
"And what's coming out of it?" she snarled.
"Smoke?" Zayne said unhelpfully.
"You just damaged an irreplaceable book with fire! You insolent children! Have you no respect? OUT! OUT!"
Zayne and I made a run for it, with everyone snickering as they watched us dash from the library. We didn't stop running until we were halfway to the Great Hall.
Zayne paused to catch his breath and I wheezed out, putting my palms on my knees to support myself. "You idiot! You owe me a quill!" I gasped out.
"It's your fault for trusting me", Zayne retorted between breaths. He stopped to lean against the wall.
I rolled my eyes and stood up straight, grabbing my book bag off the floor and throwing it over my shoulder. I nearly hit someone entering the Hall behind me.
"Oh, sorry!" I said, turning around.
Regulus' eyes were unforgivingly cold, but when he saw that it was me, they relaxed slightly. He hesitated before saying impassively, "it's all right" and moving into the Great Hall.
Zayne looked at me in surprise. "Wow, pretty tame for a serpent," he commented.
"They're not all bad," I said quietly, though it was more to myself than to Zayne.
"And thank Merlin that it's over!" Lily threw her papers into the air and danced crazily in the flurry of papers as we walked out of our last exam, Ancient Runes.
Someone had been unfortunate to exit the classroom behind us and an audible "What in Merlin-?" could be heard as one of Lily's paper flew into their face.
"Oh goodness, sorry!" Lily apologized and immediately began to collect her papers.
"Evans?" a confused voice said, and Lily looked up to see James Potter there with his wand out.
"What were you doing?" he asked. "I thought you were trying to curse me."
"No! I wouldn't," Lily responded, finally gathering all of the papers and standing up straight, "I just threw my papers into the air".
"Oh," James said, and his face and voice smoothed over into one of cockiness. "Test a little too difficult for you?"
Lily flushed. "As a matter of fact, I threw those papers because I was happy."
"Mm," James said disinterestedly, looking out the window at the Quidditch Pitch as he spoke. Sirius then walked out and upon seeing me, winked and said, "Give my most passionate regards to your sister, yeah?" and they both brushed past us and left.
Lily and I were both slightly upset by the less-than-gentleman-like greetings, but then we looked at each other... and upon realizing exactly what had happened and how pathetic they'd been, we burst into rancorous laughter, nearly crying. We grasped onto each other, laughing loudly at the silly pompousness of such arrogant jerks.
Unbeknownst to me, from someone coming down the West staircase, the pillar would block me from vision, making it look like Lily was laughing by herself. And who would come down that staircase but Severus Snape.
"Lily?" Snape said, and then I heard Severus laugh for the first time in my life. "Has the stress made you crack? Why are you laughing all by yourself?"
Lily looked up in shock, then glanced at me briefly out of the corner of her eye in panic.
I lifted a finger to my lips, shushing her, and as Severus walked beside the pillar, towards me, I moved as slyly as possible so that the pillar was always between us, I traced his movement until my back was pressed against the pillar on the side opposite Severus and Lily.
"Severus," Lily said, "Oh, no, I just…um, thought of something funny."
"Tell me," Severus said, and I could hear his voice smiling.
"About James Potter. That's all."
"James Potter?" Severus' voice was uncommonly startled, and childish. It was nice to hear him so childish. It always frightened me a little to think that he was always unattached, disinterested, and cold. It just showed that some Slytherins were putting up a façade, trying to protect themselves from the constant fighting between the Houses. Of course, some people, like Mulciber and Travers, truly believed in this "pure-blood" mania and legitimately enjoyed the fight, and in my eyes, at least, deserved the hexes that hit them. But then there were others, like Snape, Aubrey, and Regulus. They had ambition, yes, but not to the point of sacrifice, not to the point of cruelty.
Severus and Lily began to walk away, down to the Eastern staircase. I started to move from my hiding spot, when Professor Maudrick came down the Western staircase to collect our papers.
"Kingsley?"
I frantically made shushing noises and turned towards the Eastern end to make sure Lily and Severus hadn't heard- but they hadn't, they were halfway up the staircase.
Professor Maudrick followed my vision and upon seeing them, laughed and said, "You don't want to see them together? Let me guess, you don't like Severus Snape with Lily Evans? Or you fancy Severus Snape for yourself?"
I didn't bother to hide my look of disgust as I answered him, "No and no. Definitely not to that second one."
"Oh yeah?" Professor Maudrick asked me, smiling, and I knew he believed me.
"I just didn't want to interrupt them. I'd never seen Severus so carefree before and I didn't want to ruin their happiness with my unwelcome presence," I explained as best as I could, feeling very young and embarrassingly naïve as I did so.
Professor Maudrick nodded thoughtfully and then he asked me, "He's a Slytherin. That's not a bad thing?"
"It's not a bad thing. Any more than being a Gryffindor. Or a Muggle-born," I said honestly, but I felt foolish as I said that. I looked away, unable to hide the blush spreading to my face, for my naivety.
But, instead, Professor Maudrick said, "Good for you" and ruffled my hair before he went inside, and I was suddenly reminded of the only other two men who ever ruffled my hair- my father and my brother.
That year, Ravenclaw won the Quidditch Cup with Sola's last gravity-defying, spectacular catch, but much to everyone's dismay, Slytherin won the House Cup. However, I was just so relieved that exams were over that I celebrated with a mad dash into the Great Lake, holding hands with Dorcas and Marlene. Dorcas screamed when the Giant Squid tickled her foot, but the Giant Squid slowly disappeared into deeper waters, and we all teased Dorcas that evening for how high her voice could go. We played games and ate sweets all through the night, celebrating the end of the year and the last night before we boarded the Hogwarts Express the next day. I did, however, make a mental promise to myself to study hard in preparation for next year and, as Alexander reminded me, to practice Quidditch over the summer as Beaufort was leaving. Then, I was hugging the girls good-bye and soon, sooner than I could believe, I was home again with a glorious blue summer stretched out in front of me.
