academic curiosity

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"Okay, so I have a few people willing to publicly join our little society," Dale announced, setting his school bag down briskly and sorting through a note book. It was now the start of May and they had only a few short weeks to pull their club idea together enough so the glue would hold for next year.

Lily turned and watched him. "Are we a `society´ now? No more `association´? I sort of like that word..."

He shook his head. "As club President I really have to put my foot down on this one!" he replied. "But maybe we´ll do like some sort of vote over it. You know, for democracy´s sake."

"Don´t worry Percy!" Ada cried. "You know I´ll rig the ballot box for you!"

"Ahh, the sweet, sweet smell of politics." He sighed. "So. Lily. The first meeting is tomorrow, at five. As you´ve been given the boot by the Quidditch team and haven´t any boyfriends or anything you should be wide open this weekend for that meeting... Ada, please just cancel any engagements you have..."

Lily scowled as Ada sighed and said, "But poor Pontus..."

"Pontus Cruz?!" she remarked with surprise.

Ada smiled guiltily. "He asked me out yesterday... I could have sworn he fancied you... But you know, it´s not like you´re much into boys..."

Lily crossed her arms. She liked BOYS! She just didn´t see what the point of setting yourself up for marriage at the age of thirteen. And she had a faint idea that people hooked up for other less-sanctimonious reasons but she KNEW that she was much too immature to even conceptualize these mysteries in her wildest imagination.

This explanation came out as, "Get bent, you tart!" and Ada roared with appreciative laughter.

Dale cleared his throat.

***

The first meeting of The Society of Unity and Magical Acceptance (or S.U.M.A.) went as follows, Dale arrived thirty minutes early and had a panic attack that everybody else would come late. When people arrived he was thus too emotionally exhausted to commence the start of the meeting and so Lily, not at all prepared, had to do this. They had a good turnout of twenty-five people. But it took them another full half hour just to fight out who else got to be a club officer (finally they just agreed to let Ada be the `alternate secretary´ in the event that Lily broke her writing hand). By that time everybody, not discluding their stressed-out President wanted to go to bed. Lily managed to keep them there while she outlined the club goals, which she read off from a sheet that Dale handed to her wearily. Ossie Hooten, cracked up at two of the goals and asked for the fifth one to be translated in his mother language of Letzbuergesch so that he could understand it accurately. Dawn Hirsute had twenty questions about each one and every time her hand went up everyone sighed loudly. Hugh and Gloria Wampum had already set up a bet on the amount of time it would take for the Walpurgis to retaliate and try and kill them all. Twelve of the members, including Ada put a bid in that they would try for it by the following afternoon. With that dreary hope, Lily called an end of the meeting and went straight to her bed afterwards.

And twelve members of the newly formed S.U.M.A. earned ten sickles each at ten o´clock the following morning when Federico and Tomoko Satori cornered Lily in the corridor outside of Ancient Runes. The president and vice president, respectively, of The Junior Knights of Walpurgis club, they proceeded to extend their condolences that they would have to do everything they could to stamp out The Society.

Lily took this mild, smile-faced threat with a grain of salt and grinned. "We have a bet going to see how long it would take for this," she informed them. "See, we gamble our money in our club, but at least we didn´t PAY for members. You filthy bastards can just step out of my way and promise yourselves never to so much as look cross-eyed at me or anyone one of The Society ever or else I´ll hex you into oblivion and believe me I can and would have a satisfaction in doing so..." Lily gazed at the Ravenclaw, Tomoko Satori as she said this and grinned even wider. "So if you wouldn´t mind removing yourselves from my sight, I have to get to class." Federico wasn´t smiling for once and he yanked at Satori´s arm. Lily watched them leave, waving merrily. "Bye now!"

As they cleared out she met with James Potter and Remus Lupin, who had been just coming up a set of stairs.

Potter was speechless but Lupin, for once lately was verbal. "Ace! Did you just say what I think I just heard you say?!" He whistled. "That was brilliant..."

"What can I say?" she shrugged with a smile. "I get grouchy when I don´t have my coco puffs in the morning."

"Coco puffs!" he laughed, reminding Lily strongly of Ossie.

"What happened to your face, Lupin?" she asked him quite nosily and he abruptly stopped laughing and waffled around a bit until finally Potter butted in.

"Got scratched by a occamy... We were doing some extra credit for Care of Magical Creatures."

"I hate occamy!" Remus confirmed, shaking a finger. He wore a sardonic smile and sighed, then motioned for Lily to step ahead of him into class. She cast a bewildered look at them both before doing so.

It was only the following evening, when Lily had her advanced Charms lesson that she noticed that she hadn´t seen her little pal Hooten around school.

She sat down at their usual table and looked about as if he maybe was hiding in a potted plant or something. Ossie had done odder things in the history of their acquaintance.

Everyone else but Ralph was there and she wondered what to do. She twiddled her thumbs and became good at it until Ralph waltzed in ten minutes late without an apology.

"Ralph!" Lily hissed for him to come by.He did so and sat across from her.

"Your here!" he said as if this were unusual. "Have you heard?"

"No..." Lily began nervously, looking at Ossie´s empty seat.

"He´s sick. Real sick! Fell ill yesterday afternoon and no one knows why. But I think someone did it to him! I recognized the signs and Madam Pomfrey was very hiesitant about letting me see him at all until Dumbledore vouched for me! He´s Been in the infirmary alone ever since I left... Lily, I don´t have the heart for any of this tonight. I got to go..." and he got up and left sadly.

Lily sat at the table for several minutes, looking from the empty seats in front of her, to her school bag, to the door.

***

"We´ve got a problem," Lily announced to Dale. She had walked out of the lesson. She would probably hear something from Flitwick about it but she didn´t care.

"Hooten, that little Hufflepuff first year has been put into the infirmary."

Dale blinked a couple times. "Um. Well, that´s very sad," he pronounced.

"He fell ill directly after I confronted the presidents of the Walpurgis club," she sighed. Why was he being so slow?

He furrowed his eye brows. "Confrontation? You didn´t tell me about this! And what makes you think this is why the little kid is sick?"

"Oh, Dale! Three days in office and you´re already going to cauldron!" Lily yelled at him.

This struck him deeply. "Okay, fine. I believe you. Should I call an emergency meeting tonight?"

"No..." Lily stammered. She actually didn´t know what would be the wise thing. If they called an extra meeting that would make it worse... But if they didn´t call a meeting then they would have to disband and the dark side would win!

"We should go see Hooten then," Dale suggested. "At the very least will see how the poor chap is doing... If I could have chosen our first casualty, he would have been the last choice!"

"That´s exactly why they probably picked him!" Lily cried miserably. The poor brave little guy! Up against god knows how many near-full grown wizards with dark-bent powers!

***

Ossie remained in Madam Pomfrey´s care for two more days. Lily´s new favourite teacher, Professor Lindelow came up with a potion to cure him. She and Ralph, along with a troupe of the older Hufflepuffs escorted him to their common room. He asked Lily if she still had her quartz crystal. Lily gave him a sack of Honeyduke´s that she had gotten for him their last Hogsmeade weekend.

She passed Federico in the corridor before her Transfiguration exam the same day and he ran his finger across his throat and made a chicken noise. Lily wondered if this meant something relevant in his homeland and asked him this out loud. He wasn´t happy.

She had spent the previous day deciding on ways to repay them for Ossie but Dale, as president of The Society vehemently spoke against it. Sirius Black however, was of a different opinion. In class, before the exam, he asked her if she knew how Dale would handle the Walpurgis. Dale himself had resolutely refused to give information. She looked around and saw that nearly everyone within ear shot was listening.

"If it were one of my mates," Sirius intoned sagely, "every on one of those slimeball cretins would be hanging together by sad little threads at St. Mungos."

Lily nodded. "But we can´t just keep hexing each other into the hospital! I mean, we would get absolutely nothing done!"

Sirius was confused. "I don´t get you´re meaning," he admitted, looking at her like she was speaking some foreign tongue.

"Exactly," Lily sighed and ended the discussion. It was pointless to talk about it in front of people. It would encourage gossip and she wasn´t sure how to handle the situation yet. Dale was bent over his exam notes resolutely. She sighed again and pretended to study.

She was brought down completely by the threat against her friends. Not even the last bang of Hogsmeade Weekend for the term made her feel any better.

She went though, of course and by herself as Ada was being weird lately and took to meeting with various dates to the Hogs Head, a strange, yobbo sort of bar that no one from Hogwarts admitted openly to frequenting.

It was quite warm out, so she went without a cloak. She hadn´t bothered to straighten out her hair so it was unruly and she was wearing her most comfortable clothing. She marched a circle around the village by herself and then decided to go view the shrieking shack.

As she came to a short decline down a rocky hill she saw Ada, a large dingy-looking sack at her side.

"Oy! Mac Fusty!" Lily called to her, and waved.

Ada turned and her mouth dropped open. It was then that Lily´s eyes traveled from her best friend in the world to a strange man standing next to her.

Lily froze for a second, not knowing what she should do. She had the overwhelming feeling that she should not have seen this.

Ada though, saving face, waved back and motioned for Lily to come forward. Leaving the dingy sack behind with the man she met her half way and grinned sheepishly.

Any time Ada smiled like this Lily knew she was going to say something upsetting. And Ada dropped a real whopper.

"Hey, it´s good you´re here. I´m leaving!" she announced as if they had only been next neighbours in some suburban town and Ada would be leaving for the mini-mart.

"For where? Who´s he?" Lily asked, flabbergasted and starting to feel physically ill.

Ada turned to him and smiled. "He´s a friend... You know Binky right? I told you about him. Well, you might have noticed that I´ve been out of sorts lately. I just don´t fit in with you all anymore. For a while I thought it could work, I like you and Dale. Even Alia and Joe are all right. But it´s been so hard... I have something to admit, Lily." Here she grinned again and Lily felt even sicker. She couldn´t even speak.

"Binky is a follower of The Dark Lord. I´ve joined as well, last winter when they had the gathering, we were marked!" She pulled up a sleeve secretively, looking over her shoulder nervously at the man. He was looking supremely bored.

When Ada lifted up the shirt sleeve Lily saw a horrible burn scar, in the shape of a skull with a snake tongue. It was identical to The Dark Mark.

"Oh my god," Lily rocked forward, than back.

Ada grinned in that very odd way again and continued as if Lily wasn´t having an episode. "Remember that masked man we saw in the dungeons that one night? He was a Death Eater too! At first, I didn´t know about them coming... But that´s how they decided to pick up Voldemort´s supporters! It was brilliant really, as soon as we went to bed that night I snuck back down and met with him and he took me away and had me back before sunrise! Dumbledore was gone! Ugh, but Bellatrix Black was there with us and I thought I would have to strangle her but she was a quiet little mouse that night!" Ada laughed at this memory. "So I put up with her for the night and who else? Oh, yeah that wonky Cra-"

"Are we coming?!" The man suddenly shouted after them. Lily jumped but Ada laughed loudly and waved to him. "Hold on!"

"Well Lily Evans, I guess this is goodbye..."

"Ada... Before you go..." Lily breathed.

She stopped and smiled at Lily.

"If I ever see you again, it´ll be when you´re a Death Eater and I´m fighting you. I hope you won´t be angry if I run into you then because I´ll have to try and kill you."

Ada was somewhat taken back by this. Lily had never been so upset in her life. She felt as if the world would end at any second. The second this conversation was over maybe.

Ada nodded. "I won´t hate you for it. And I know you won´t hate me if I have to kill you too. Were uh... What´s the word? Star-crossed! It´s not our faults. Farewell!"

She turned and went back down towards the man and the dingy sack. She lifted it over her shoulder and the sickening pair walked deeper into the forest. Then it was just the shrieking shack that hung in view before Lily.

She was having a hard time breathing, something that felt like adrenaline but made her feel weary instead of energized coursed through her veins. She didn´t realize that she was taking wild strides back and forth, kicking dirt and and fallen brambles everywhere.

She started to scream.