academic curiosity

"I ACCUSE Mrs. Peacock!" Dale Percy declared merrily.

"YOU LIE!!!" Alia Bashir screeched.

Dale grinned and continued, "WITH! The lead pipe in the conservatory!"

"NO!" Alia lamented. Lily looked up from her school work and smiled. The pure bloods didn´t quite get the game and were becoming high strung.

"Alia, just because your game piece is Peacock, doesn´t mean anything." Lily called to them.

"Yes, I was dead at the time!´ Alia turned frantically, wringing her hands. "I have no recollection of these occurrences inside the conservatory! I've never even SEEN a lead pipe before!!"

"Joe, would you check the files and see if I´m correct?" Dale asked.

Lily heard a shuffling of paper and then Alia wailed.

She tuned them out and fixed all of her attention back on the prototype of her transmogrifier. This would be her crowning achievement of Transfiguration for the year if she could get it to work.

"So," Ada came over and sat on the common room floor across from her. "What did you end up asking your parents for your birthday?"

Lily shrugged, pretending indifference. "Lunascope."

"Hah!" Ada laughed. "I´ve gotten a lunascope every birthday AND Christmas from my gramps since I was six! Why don´t I just give you one of mine?"

"My parents can´t afford a broom and I couldn´t think of anything else in the entire world I wanted... That´s legal."

"That´s a jip," Ada sighed sympathetically. "I wish the Ministry would just lay off flying carpets already! So are you going to be done with this mess before tomorrow afternoon?" Ada poked at a shiny knob that had fallen off the kitchen stove in Lily´s home in Brixton. She was trying to screw it into a cardboard box, which was the prototype.

A few other knobs and toggles were affixed to it already. Lily was saving money for a sturdier material to use for the final project. But for one time use cardboard would do just fine, she knew.

"Yes, but only if you get out of here and give me some space for a bit..." Lily commanded.

Ada consented and stood up.

"Oh!" Lily remembered something. "Can I have that Voldemort action figure?"

"You mean the one with the adjustable fingers that can really throttle the house elf or goblin accessories?" Ada made a petulant face. "Why?"

"I need it... For my prototype."

"But it´ll be worth a fortune one day! Only five hundred were made..."

"C´mon! We´ll all be dead by the time any one has the sense of humour enough to buy a Dark Lord action figure, okay? So why don´t you let me have it?"

"Fine, fine. When you want it, it´s in the second compartment of my trunk. Try not to get my Ogham cards out of order, willya?" Ada went back to the board game. Dale, who was a half blood had brought them from home. He was showing the pure bloods how to properly play Ouija. Within five minutes Peeves had been `mystically´ summoned and began beating Ada over the head with the Ouija board. The plastic planchett went flying into a boy´s toilet and the table began to spin. Lily worked on.

Kneeling over her card board box, she began to test the combustion mechanism. It was the first stage towards completion. In her preoccupied state she didn´t notice the shadow of four boys fall over her work.

"Why are you doing that to that box?" Remus Lupin asked her, pointing at her tortured-looking project. Lily stopped and looked upward at them. It was off or on with this lot. Originally they had gotten on fine but James Potter held a bit of a grudge since she stole the stone eye of the gargoyle from him that landed her and a few others into a trap for the heir of Slytherin. While that adventure had led to disaster, he obviously still begrudged her all the attention she had gotten for rescuing them all from the trap. Whenever anyone entered the brand new Potions dungeon, most people thought of her and not the one who had originally noticed the key to open it.

And this year she had noted that the boys´ personalities hadn´t gone under any improvement over vacation. Potter and Black, who were best friends, had become more ostentatious. Because they came from well-known wizarding families, Lily suspected, they were allowed to behave any way they wanted. Remus Lupin was a somewhat squinty, dark character that always was excused from long absences and the little sneaky one, Peter... Well there wasn´t any reason to like him was there? He emulated the worst traits of the others and Lily had no patience for mindless followers.

Sirius stepped over and finished the joke, "Yeah, what did it ever do to you?"

"Go away, please," Lily asked politely. She looked back down and began modifying the antennae. The toggle would have to just wait to be installed properly until to she was under less anxiety.

"I think it´s cute," Peter stepped forward and grinned, nudging it with a toe. "Watcha call it, huh, Lily?" She watched as the toggle fell off and the boys snickered. Before she could open her mouth for a smart reply she was interrupted.

"She calls it The Zombie Factory!" James strolled up and snorted.

Lily scowled at his reference to last year´s troubles, although there was no way for him to know just how touchy the subject was. He didn´t know about the Slytherin seventh years who had tried to threaten her nor did he know of that owl she received form a Death-eater on Christmas.

"Why `The Zombie Factory?´" Peter asked, bewildered.

James laughed. "Evans here is going to build an army of the undead!" He scowled back at her. "But Evans... You wont be able to fit anything in there larger than... Say a frog, or even small dog maybe."

"Yes," Lily said standing up clutching her toggle in one hand. "I´m going to raise a army of Pekinese. With a cardboard box and a screwdriver. WILL YOU shove off?"

"Later Evans!" and "Keep away from our pets Evans!" they called, laughing as they obligingly walked away.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                *     * *

The next day proved to be a trial for Lily.

First, in Potions, Professor Vagras made a public insult of her (admittedly faulty) cauldron. The class had a good laugh at her expense. She had been using the cauldron since she started at Hogwarts, over a year ago. Normally they lasted longer but under Glint´s pyschotic instruction last year it had maintained a leak in at least four places and a crack ran down one side that would shortly split the whole thing in half. To boot it had a strange funk about it from a potion that went awry when she had to partner with that scholastic disaster, Alia, and she mixed up the Bundimun for Bobutubor pus left over from the fourth year´s class before them.

She hadn´t mentioned this to her parents when they were doing school shopping as she knew that money would be tight with both her and her elder sister starting off for boarding school. Petunia had suddenly started a campaign to attend this new school, which fancied itself the feminine Smeltings, which Lily thought was just a feminine version of ridiculous. Unfortunately Muggle schools charged money to attend...

It didn´t to occur to Vagras that there was a reason why she had a bad cauldron and if it occurred to anyone else that just made Lily feel worse. Vagras graded her very low even though she had turned out just as bad a potion as anyone else´s in their brand new cauldrons. Then Severus Snape had outright refused to partner with her for a quick five minute potion and finally she had been the only student to work alone when Vagras let him be third with two other Slytherins.

Immediately following Potions, she had been running to get her transmogrifier prototype when she tripped over a Sixth year´s foot and went sprawling in the middle of the corridor. Her bottle of ink shattered in her bag and she bit her tongue.

When she finally got to her dorm she saw that one of her dorm mates must have stepped on the prototype, busting a big hole in one side of the cardboard. Lily didn´t think it would affect the project too much as she had a year supply of spell-o tape in her trunk. But it would add to it´s rag tag look and no one would take it seriously.

Which is exactly what happened. Even McGonagall suppressed a grin as it was Lily´s turn to show her project proposal for the year. Peter and James catcalled throughout the whole thing and no one lifted a finger to shut them up.

She inserted Ada´s action figure inside, closed the box lid upon it, flipped three switches and waved her wand over it all seven times. Smoke steeped from the card board as she reopened it to reveal the toy had been transfigured into... A big hunk of grass.

This was not expected. The class was highly amused. Dale, turning white from trying not to laugh shook his head at her and tried to be encouraging. Ada was snorting like a wild pig into her text book. She doesn´t seem to be too sad to see the Dark Lord go, Lily thought bitterly.

She sat down, leaving her box and piece of smelly sod in the corner. She refused to listen to any of the other proposals in pure dismay. She had done the worst out of everyone to be sure.

Even the worst Transfiguration students, like Peter, Ada and one-eyed Davey Grudgeon, had come up with a clever project that captured the class´ attention.

Lily was ashamed when McGonagall called her to her office after class.

"Miss Evans, I can see that the results of your project did not go as planned."

Lily could only nod sadly.

"Well then, you´ll just have to work a little bit more on it then. Do you feel you can build this thing by the end of term? If you fail I don´t need to remind you what that would mean for your grade. It would be a fail for Transfiguration, which would hold you back from third year. Are you sure you didn´t bite off more than you could spit six feet sideways?"

"No. I want to do this."

McGonagall smiled suddenly. "If you could do it, and I´m not saying you can do it, but if you could... No one has ever built a Transmogrifier at Hogwarts! You would be the first! As you can imagine it would be quite a thing to boast about that a second year had completed one. I´d just love to see their faces at Durmstrang..."

"Yes, at Durmstrang they have a class on Transmogrification, don´t they?"

McGonagall shuddered. "You should get to Herbology child. I´m accepting your proposal. Furthermore, I´ll sponsor the cost of any of the hardware you will need. That´s all for now Miss Evans. Don´t be late for your next class."

Lily skipped to Herbology, the whole time in the greenhouse planning her revenge upon those who crossed her this day. She would build a real Transmogrifier and it would bring terror into the hearts of all the other students and she would rule!! No one else had a official sponsorship from a teacher, she was sure of it! Of course, not many of them needed it...

"That´s a funny drawing," Alia commented.

"What is it!?" Dale leaned over then and examined Lily´s doodles.

She pointed to one cluster of squiggles. "That´s me." She pointed to a cluster below, "And that´s everyone that I will CRUSH."

"Excellent!" Ada sighed. "Is that Vagras?!" Ada rubbed her finger over a dark splotch of squiggles. "I TOLD you she was a mean old bat! Why is every Potions teacher evil? Is it a part of the qualifications? To scare and intimidate your charges half to death so they can´t learn a thing?"

"I hate her now," Lily agreed. "Why did she have to make fun of my cauldron? Is it a crime to be poor now?"

"Shut your traps both of you and stop feeling so sorry for yourself Lily!" Dale hissed, snapping his attention away from his work tray. "Maybe if you spent more time trimming your holly and less whining about your other classes you would be getting a higher score in Herbology. You do need this class to progress to third year, y´know!"

"No... I can trim a few sprigs of holly in my sleep," Lily replied. "What I need to do to pass second year is build that Transmogrifier for McGonagall!"

"I don´t think it would be safe to hold garden shears in your sleep..." Ada thought out loud.

"You´re crazy, you know?" Dale replied to Lily. "You´re the nicest person I´ve ever met. But you´ve got a demented side. First dancing skeletons, then correspondence with a dark arts cult. Now this."

`So you don´t think I can do it?" Lily asked, horrified. Dale was practical. He would know the reality of the situation pretty well.

He replied, "Of course I think you can do it. But just because someone can do a thing doesn´t mean they should!"

`Well, McGonagall thinks I should build it! She´s even funding the parts I´ll have you know!" Lily replied.

"No!" Dale hissed, then leaned over. "I´m not talking about the Transmogrifier thing, although I feel that helps illustrate my point..."

But before he could further explain, they were losing house points for talking while Professor Sprig was. Ten points down the can and for the rest of the class period the other Gryffindors shot dirty looks at the three of them. Dale looked sheepish.

"I think I see what you mean now," he whispered confidentially to Lily. "You´d think we´d ran over their grandmothers with a lawn mower!"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 *     *     *

"Oh, is it that time of year again?" Frank Longbottom asked as he watched Lily and Dale jointly cutting up one of the pumpkins from Hagrid´s garden a week later.

"Halloween!" Dale cried gleefully. "It´s the one thing you wizarding families can´t touch Muggles on!"

Frank just looked confused and walked away.

"Let´s not ostracize ourselves any further, okay?" Lily intoned. People still ran from the room at the mention of Muggle board games. Peeves was still hurling the tiny plastic pieces from Monopoly at the Gryffindors in the corridors. Dale had to incinerate the Ouija in the fire so that everyone would calm down.

"What? Plenty of the other students are like us!" Dale pointed out stubbornly. "Why should we hide who we are? There isn´t anything wrong with being Muggle-born!"

"I agree!" Lily insisted. "But maybe we shouldn´t dress up in costumes like we planned..."

Dale froze and stared at her stonily.

"Okay, okay... Just kidding!" she laughed nervously. "But I just think we´ll be getting a lot of strange looks during the feast is all... And what with my already being known as a total sideshow freak here, I just thought we could play it cool and-"

"It´s too late for that," Dale replied simply. "I´ll happily join your sideshow act! Rather that than the ugly masses!"

Lily smiled at him. He blushed and stared fixedly the the point of the knife as he carved a triangular eye hole in the center of the pumpkin.

"Besides!" he coughed, red-faced. "We were miserable last year because we didn´t get to wear costumes, remember?"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     *     *     *

Lily had spent the early hours of Halloween going through a wizarding catalog. She wanted to start building within two months and who knows how long these things took to deliver. Owls were a lot more exciting than post men, but at least post men were reliable.

When she sent her order form off with one of the school owls, she headed back to the tower. On the way she beheld a bittersweet sight.

The boy´s toilet on the fourth floor had been closed for weeks as it had become clogged up with something (Lily strongly suspected it was a certain house´s missing banner). The groundskeeper Filch, and to Lily´s great glee, a determinedly unhappy Mrs. Norris were swimming in toilet water flowing from the doorway. Apparently they had been trying to clear up the mysterious clog, only to find the cause was a Defense Against the Dark Arts quiz... Water-logged it had expanded to three times it´s normal size and easily readable on one of the parchments sheets was JAMES POTTER.

Severus must have exacted his revenge in his own way. She recalled the memory of James insisting that he turned in the exam... Crundall was forced to fail him for the day though. That must have been humiliating, Lily realized.

Potter and Snape were both always calling out answers, nose to nose at the head of the class trying to prove themselves better than everyone. Remus obviously was Crundall´s favourite, but he didn´t seem to care one way of the other and let James outshine him without any reservations.

It was brilliant, really. While Potter resorted to immature pranks, Snape had hit him right where it would hurt the most and without much effort. Lily quickly judged who was the more cunning of the two but she didn´t think much of Severus anyway. His knowledge of the dark arts wasn´t as impressive as it was worrisome.

Lily didn´t hang around as she heard voices coming along the corridor. Tap dancing around the oncoming deluge of lavatory water she scampered up the stairs to her house commons.

"You will never guess what I just saw downstairs," Lily snickered as she approached the couch by the fire, where she saw two familiar heads convening.

Dale and Ada were seated amongst a mass of torn bed sheets, ripped into lone strips. Quite a few of the older students were shooting troubled looks at them. Had they gone insane?

"Whose going to be the mummy?" Lily asked immediately.

"I am!" Dale waved his hand.

"Where have you BEEN? It´s taken us two full hours to get this far!" Ada replied in vexation. "Stupid Muggles and their stupid ideas. Why on EARTH would people think to dress up like a WITCH! Huh?!" she demanded. "REAL FUNNY!"

"Guess who´s lost Defense Quiz has been clogging the fourth floor boy´s toilet all this time?" Lily gasped.

But neither were particularly interested.

"That stupid Potter. Stupid Snape. Stupid toilet," Ada replied.

"So what? You hate James Potter now?" Dale asked, making a long strip from the bed sheet.

"Well, don´t we all?" Lily asked, perplexed.

"I´m just saying," Dale sniffed, "that it´s one thing to root against the him when one has other Gryffindors to root for instead. But when it comes to the Slytherins... At least Potter´s family isn´t going around in dark cloaks and kidnapping is all I´m saying," Dale finished.

"And what... Snape´s family is?" Lily asked for the sake of argument.

Dale and Ada both began to chortle though.

"Well?" Lily asked again, impatient.

"You should know something..." Dale began.

"SSH!" Ada commanded. "It´ll do no good for her to know! Shut it Percy!"

Lily looked from to the other and felt herself grow warm. It seemed like she was always five seconds away from embarrassment these days! And she had no idea why!

"Oh, it´s not like it´s TRUE!" Dale chided Ada. The latter shrugged a shoulder and Dale went on. "Last year as a joke, Potter told everyone that Snape was your SECRET boyfriend!" he convulsed with the hilarity of it.

Lily´s mouth dropped open with surprise. Then, "Being best friends with almost all girls is making you delirious, Dale!" He nodded immediate agreement as he was doubled over laughing.

"Afterward, Sirius said he saw you two kissing behind the broom shed!" Ada added and she and Dale cracked up again.

Lily, mouth gaping made a few feeble guffawing noises than finally busted up as well.

"Is that why Snape makes such a show of hating me?!" Lily wondered.

"Uh... I´m sure that´s probably just part of his natural charm," Dale said. "But now you know why we all laugh whenever you defend that slimy character! WE know it´s not true of course, but still, it´s rather funny... Everyone else just took it as confirmation of your undying love for Severus Snape!"

These last words had them all rolling.

Lily rubbed her eyes. "Why would that Potter do such a thing? What have I ever done to provoke him? Well... outside of stealing his father´s stone eye artifact for a few days? Oh, and that time I called him a git... And when I laughed when he got that answer wrong in Charms... Oh, then he might have overheard me making fun of Sirius´ crazy appearance..."

"Sirius thought that was funny. Remember? He pretended to really be Chales Manson for the rest of the week after you said that!" Dale grinned.

"You showed Potter up the first day we all met, remember?" Ada asked suddenly.

"Oh... I do!" Dale cried. "The satchel that Binns confiscated from him at the beginning of class. Probably thought you were trying to show off. But you know... That was the first and last day Professor Binns knew my real name! He always alternates between `Bobby´ and `Ricardo´ now!"

"Yes, the `Bobby´ days are the good days... When he says `Ricardo´ we all know were in for some three hour long tirade on seventeenth century goblin trade laws." Lily mused.

"Oh well, what can you do?" Ada shrugged. "Binns wouldn´t know the names of anything unless he had that history book right there in front of him!"

Lily got up and stretched. "Let´s get our costumes on Dale... The feast will start in a few hours!"