academic curiosity

*    *    *16

Professor Flitwick (by far and away Lily´s favourite professor) arranged her advanced lessons to occur after her Care of Magical Creatures class. She was so excited that she had forgotten to mention it to anybody.

"Where do you think you're headed Miss Thing?" Dale demanded. "You were going to help Joe with his Potions essay!"

"Oh, you´re right!" Lily slapped her head. "Dale, I don´t have any money to pay your salary but if you would be a dear and just be my secretary from now on... I can´t seem to keep my head on! I have to be in the classroom in five minutes!"

Dale was pacified by the compliment. "Look, your no good with Potions anyhow. I don´t have much homework tonight, so I can just take over. What´s happening in this classroom? Snogging that Beater, Cruz again?"

"Oh! That!" Lily laughed, two-stepping fretfully. "No! No! That was an accident... I mean! He kissed me first! Then I was like, `No!´ and then he went away. And I was like, `Ew, no thanks...´" Then Lily laughed again.

Dale watched her with raised eyebrows. "Okay. Well, see you later then!"

Lily, now in an excess of aggravated energy, ran to the advanced lesson.

She came in and saw to her relief that she wasn´t the only wizard to be tutored. There were ten others at least. She saw also, that she was not the youngest.

"Who are you?" she whispered to a boy who must have been a first year.

She sat next to him as he nudged a pair of glasses over his fore head and on to the top of his head.

"Hi. I´m Ossie Hooten. And you are?" he looked at her politely.

She smiled. "Lily Evans. You're the youngest here, you must be dying. I just hope you´re not better than me as you´re two years younger..."

"I have emotional problems," Ossie pointed out immediately, saying the two words as if they were a strange sounding psychiatric diagnosis. "So if I´m the best you shouldn´t feel too badly about it!" he cracked up and Lily felt it was only nice to force herself to laugh too. But after about twenty seconds she felt like a nutcase and stopped.

After five minutes no one spoke up, as she expected. It seemed that the class had commenced on it´s own, without a leader. This was proven a fact when a lanky seventh year came to the small table that Ossie and Lily sat at together with a notebook.

"Evans?" he asked, making a check by what must have been her name in the book. "Right. Of course. So, you met Ossie. Good, you two should work together!"

"Uh, oh," Ossie applied his glasses to his face and folded his hands in a businesslike manner.

"So what do we do?" Lily asked the lanky boy.

"Hmm... We were told, I mean `we´ as in me and the other three tutors, to start you all off on defensive charms... It´s a bit odd if you ask me-"

"But we didn´t Ralph," Ossie replied honestly.

`Ralph´ must have been used to this sort of response from the first year, all he did was pause and go on. "Yes, well, we follow Flitwick and Dumbledore´s lesson plan to a tee." Ralph removed a long slender wand that looked a bit like him.

He saw Lily eye it and he grinned pride fully. "Twelve inches!"

Lily´s eyes began to tear up because she was trying so hard not to burst into laughter. Ralph didn´t notice as he went on. "It´s a Holly-Ivy hybrid, with the unicorn tail hair core. It´s not one of Ollivander´s either... I got this up north."

This pulled Lily´s mind out of the gutter. "For reals? Can I see it?"

He handed it over and she felt the ivy wrapped around the base like hard rope. It was the most beautiful wand she had ever seen.

"It´s especially designed for certain types of charms and hexes. You should ask to see Ossie´s. His is an Ollivander´s but it´s pretty unusual too. Ossie? Will you show us your wand?" he asked the youngest boy.

Hooten looked around warily and after thirty seconds of prying through his school bag came up with a small paper bundle. From this he unwrapped his wand very slowly. It was laid out on the paper and Lily didn´t think it prudent to touch it.

"It´s very nice," she said immediately. It wasn't much different than her own wand, except it was in the squarish shape and choppy style that had become popular lately in wands.

"Tell Lily about your wand Ossie!" Ralph nudged.

"Oh. It´s got a core inside too. Dragon heart string. And it´s made out of straif."

"That´s blackthorn," Ralph explained to Lily.

"Mine is supposed to be good for charms..." Lily removed her wand from her pocket without ceremony. "Swishy," she said as she gave it a good wave. Both Ossie and Ralph jumped and Lily smiled at them.

"So defensive spells. I know a few of those," she offered, setting her wand down on the table. "I read about a fabulous one that I actually used on-"

She stopped abruptly. Ralph had a prefect´s badge pinned to his robe. But he merely smiled and nodded.

"I do too!" Ossie cried in his small, high pitched voice. "Do I ever! I could turn your eye balls backwards and your socks inside out!"

"Hey, that´s Odiosus, isn´t it? I haven´t mastered that yet. I kept trying in my first year until finally I just got bored of it and moved onto Lingua Tortum-"

"The Washing Machine Mouth hex!" Ossie exclaimed happily. "Know what Lily? Do you know what? My great Uncle Hooten discovered that!! He got to name it and everything!!"

Two hours passed before Lily realized that the lesson was long over. They hadn´t performed a single spell. She walked little Ossie Hooten to the Hufflepuff common room and got a a dusty quartz crystal as a gift from him.

"Where were you?" Alia asked. She was lacing up her boots.

"Why? Where are you going?" Lily answered, watching her put on a heavy cloak next.

"Quidditch practice. Omar fired you," she explained.

"Oh, did he? Found out how I never came to practice? Who ratted me?" she joked. She felt only a hint of remorse. If she had more time and less serious worries she would have very much enjoyed the attention and fun of being a house team player.

"Well, actually," Alia began slowly. But Marva Sequim came in and finished for her.

"No one ratted! But Deck canned Pontus Cruz for the fight that got the first match forfeited and since Cruz was the one who wanted you on the team, you got the axe along with him!" Alia stomped one of her neat little boots at Sequim.

"I was going to tell her!"

"Whatever, Electra!" Marva insulted lazily and began rifling through her books on rock bands and illicit spell work. The Ministry had banned the use of "muggle spells" in 1965, after a experimental witch turned her boyfriend´s ears to potatoes in the sixties. They couldn´t figure out the counter-spell and finally were forced to cut them off his head. He was never the same. But it was a popular kitschy past time of some of the younger set to collect the muggle "witch" books.

"Your mother was part hag!" Alia retorted. "Anyway, Lily. Poor Cruz got knocked off the team because he took the blame for that row. I just know it wasn´t his fault... But Omar and I are on again and so he replaced you with me, I´m awfully sorry, but I´ve wanted to play ten times more than you do. Not miffed are you?"

Lily shrugged. "What about Cruz´s spot?"

"Not sure yet, but Potter is saying he´ll get Pontus back faster than you can swing a kneazle in a circle."

"Kneazles can be heavy. That´s not very fast!" Lily replied, crossing her eyes and pretending to swing a heavy load around her shoulder. Both Alia and Marva started to laugh.

It was then that they heard it. A long, loud scream coming from somewhere below them.

A deep silence followed and Lily, frozen looked from Alia to Marva. Both the girls looked stunned. Finally Lily moved to the door and peered out.

The common room wasn´t crowded, but the Gryffindors there were all standing and staring around, everyone in a completely different direction.

"What was it?" Nancy Elliott, a sixth year prefect shouted at everyone. A wizarding chess board had been upturned at her table and her tiny white pieces had flown all over.

"A girl was screaming!" Roscoe Barrett offered the obvious.

"Yes, but who was it?" Corky Puggler asked, coming down from his own dorm, followed by a few of the other fifth year boys.

Lily, Alia and Marva watched from behind the narrow opening of the door.

"Everyone!" Nancy bellowed in her commanding, low voice. "Sit down if you did not scream just now!"

After a few seconds of confusion, everyone in sight sat down. Nancy looked at Corky skeptically and he batted his eyes hopelessly.

"Where did it come from?" some boy called out.

"Maybe it was outside?" another suggested helpfully, but Corky and a few others were still looking under the arm chairs.

"This is hysterical," Marva spat from over Lily´s shoulder.

Luckily the portrait hole flew open and in poured Peter Pettigrew, James Potter and Sirius Black. The three boys were looking uncharacteristically freaked out.

"Potter! What was it?" Nancy immediately seized upon them.

"A girl! From Ravenclaw!" Potter explained, looking as if it was the most confusing news he had ever had to deliver. He hesitated and gave a sidelong glance to Sirius who was shaking his head. Lily came down the stairs and saw that their faces were very pale. Were they scared? And where was Remus Lupin? They usually always hung out in a quad in the evenings!

"She says she saw a monster!" Peter cried, he slammed the portrait hole shut loudly. He then scampered into his dorm, slamming the door behind himself. Black rolled his eyes at Potter and crossed his arms fretfully.

Pandemonium ensued for fifteen minutes until McGonagall arrived and scolded them all into sulky silence. She banished them all to their dorms despite it only being eight o´clock. The floor and tables were covered in people´s school work and card games. Half the furniture was upset.

*    *    *

"Of course she didn´t tell us a damn thing!" Frank was telling a boy from Ravenclaw the next morning. "Just sent us all to bed like we´re three..."

"Well, the girl who saw the thing is in my house! And I got an earful..." a boy from Ravenclaw bent over and whispered it all to Frank and Lily couldn´t hear what was being said. Virtually every single person at lunch, staff not discluding were discussing the event of the prior evening with relish and appropriate amount of foreboding terror. Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen, and although he often didn´t show up for meals with them lately it was seen as a bad omen.

"She´s dead, dead from fright I hear!" Davey Grudgeon was saying loudly through a mouth of potatoes.

Ada came and sat down between Lily and Marva, looking sleepy. "What´s going on, huh? I got in late and got a detention from McGonagall for it! Who died? Hope it was Lisanne Harris, the back stabbing snake-lover..."

"Did you see the monster?" Lily muttered.

Ada raised an eyebrow. "Well, as I said already, I did run into McGonagall and-"

"Ha, ha," Lily replied. "Some Ravenclaw was screaming her head off last night, didn´t you hear? Then Potter came in and said she saw some monster. What a riot. Probably experimenting with some of Eddie´s Norwegian stash."

Ada continued to look very amazed but didn´t say anything. "I should so writet Binky about this!"

Pontus Cruz came in and much to Lily´s dismay sat right across from her.

"All right?" he said to them, looking at both of the girls pointedly.

Ada didn´t bother with any reply but Lily managed a mumbled, "Hey."

"So, did you know about what happened?" he asked conspiratively, leaning over his plate towards her.

She leaned forward as well, hoping to get some information on the monster. "No! Have you?..."

"Well, obviously. I mean, he did kick me off. Are you disappointed? I didn´t think you would be. But did you know I got back on the team? Apparently they realized that there weren´t very many Beaters to choose from in Gryffindor- Stupid prat, why did he try and kick me off?"

Lily straightened. He was just talking about Quidditch again. "Sorry you got in trouble," she replied, buttering some toast. "It´s terribly unfair in my opinion. Can´t you go to McGonagall about it? Nobody has much faith in Deck these days..."

He went on some more, and Lily nodded every now and then and made affirming noises when necessary and scowled any time he made a complaint about something.

"Lily," Ada said as Cruz got up and left for an early practice with the team. "You´re learning the finer points of being a girlfriend," she chuckled.

"Shut-up!" she laughed getting up to go work on her History of Magic essay. "Don´t start saying that or he might hear and think he can kiss me again!"

"Just kidding," Ada got up as well, "Want to go spy on the Jr. Walpurgis tonight?"

"They´ve got a meeting tonight?" Lily asked with wonder. An early curfew had been put in effect due to the monster sighting. But she wouldn´t put it past the junior Death Eaters to try and go on with it anyway. She only wished she could see them when McGonagall sent them back to their dorms with their tails between their legs, especially Bellatrix and that Federico.

Ada gazed thoughtfully. "I´ve been saving a few fireworks from last summer..."

*    *    *

Ada´s explosives were for another time though. Fate would not have it yet. The Jr. Knights of Walpurgis weren´t allowed to meet. And if they had, Lily would not know because McGonagall had each and every Gryffindor escorted to the common room by 6:30. Unfortunately she was ushered in by an irritable Corky Puggler.

"So, Corky," she asked hesitantly. "Did they ever find out what scared that Ravenclaw?"

He shook his head distractedly. "Doubt that. Nothing to find, if you ask me. The Head Girl had a conference with us prefects and told us that the second year, she was only a second year, claimed to see a `white faced, robed creature 'hovering´ on the first floor. She said it just stood hunched over watching her around a corner and she screamed and ran. It chased her but it just blew past her and disappeared... `Into thin air!´", he mimicked a high-pitched girl´s voice, "What I would like to know is what a second year was doing on the first floor far from her common room at that hour!" Lily glared at him but he didn´t notice as he turned to tell off Davey for falling behind.

"What a prat." Alia sighed, flipping through a Teen Witch Weekly.

"I wonder what she saw down there?" Marva asked, her interest piqued. Lily was also quite fascinated and happy to find a compatriot in this. She moved over near Marva.

"It sounds absolutely horrific! I want to see it!" Lily clutched her arm.

Marva shook her face at Lily. "No, un,uh! You won´t catch me going after that thing! Whatever it is..."

"Oh, Sequim! Where´s your sense of fun?" Ada joined them. "I want to see it too... Can we get out of here tonight do you think?"

Lily thought a moment and then answered practically, "Probably. But tomorrow is the first Hogsmeade weekend... Do you really want to risk punishment before we get to enjoy Hogsmeade at least one time?"

"True, true... Ah, screw it. Let´s just go and do it. Hogsmeade has a lot of things, but not once have I heard tell of any white-faced hovering monsters! I hope it tries to kill us... If it doesn´t then I´ll be forced to lie and say it did..."

"We know how much you hate lying," Marva cracked. "Where are my kicks?"