academic curiosity

Ada Mac Fusty, before running away from school, had been their fourth in the dorm room. In addition to being a tyrannical neat freak, she had played host to a gallery of Dark Lord clippings. None of the girls had heard of Voldemort before rooming with Ada. There were photos of him posing in China gardens with famous wizard botanists, and greyish newsprint images of him shaking the hands of politicians. Now that there was a prominent body count, none of these people could recollect ever meeting the man, of course.

“Look! You can still see the moustache he was trying out in the sixties!” Lily squealed, as she stared at the headboard of the bed Ada had once used. “Not his best fashion move...”

She rubbed the rough surface. They had magicked off much of the collage Ada had left behind years ago, and then house elves had got even more of it off. But whatever spell Ada had used to fix them to the wood was stubborn. Bits and pieces of the pictures were still stuck, and of course Voldemort was peering out of all of them, determined to make his presence known now that the bed curtains had been pulled open and people were near. All the tiny Voldemorts were scowling now, after Lily’s comment on the Sergeant Pepper-like moustache.

“These won’t give us a good comparison to your photo at all,” Alia muttered. Lily looked down from the tiny photograph she was holding out and saw that Alia had goose bumps on her bare arms. They were trying to identify the man in Lily’s photograph as Voldemort, before she had to hand it over to Regulus Black. But Alia was right; these miniscule, ripped up images of the man, scattered all over the headboard would not offer a good sense of his true appearance.

“Yes... and of course the man in this old portrait is not very clear at all either. Also, he doesn’t move... you’d hardly think ol’ Snake-Eyes would pose for a Muggle’s camera!” Lily said. She tossed the photo on the bed and felt around for her school robes.

“And I haven’t seen your photo here before,” Alia insisted as she rubbed her arms. She pointed one finger across the room to her own bed. “And I slept directly across from Ada, so I would recognize it, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes,” Lily admitted. “That’s true. And there’s the fact that the photo has to be at least seventy years old! I mean, check out that top hat! He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is not that old, is he?”

“Who knows?” Marva drawled, as she searched her messy trunk for a forgotten textbook. “Maybe the Dark Lord likes to look like a fop from the Gay 90’s?”

“But if it’s really not You-Know-Who, then what would that little git Regulus want with it?” Lily asked.

“Maybe it is You-Know-Who, but the photograph has been jinxed to be frozen up?” offered Marva as she grabbed a tatty copy of Clueless... About Magical Fungi by Cher Horowitz, and left the room.

“I just love it when people’s goodbyes are in the form of a question,” Lily sighed at the door as it shut behind her. “It adds much-needed drama to our lives...”

“Because we don’t have hardly enough as it is,” finished Alia with a grin. “Ah, hell. We ought to try and see if this thing is hexed to be still. It sounds awfully dumb if you ask me, but we’ll feel like giant prats if it turns out to be true later, won’t we?”

The two girls rolled both their eyes and sleeves, and set about waving their wands over the small artefact.

“Nothing...” Lily said ten minutes later, after the only thing they had accomplished in the investigation was singeing a corner of the photo and making Alia’s eyelashes purple. “What are we going to do about it?” Lily asked forlornly, as she placed the photo in her pocket, after dressing.

“I kind of like it,” Alia replied, batting her eyelids into a small mirror.

“No, I mean what are we going to do about the photograph? I have to give this to Regulus Black today or I think he’ll hex me.”

“You can take him,” Alia murmured supportively as she batted her lashes, changing out her books into a matching violet-coloured bag.

“Maybe if I get rid of the bloody thing once and for all, the dreams will stop?” Lily asked hopefully.

“Why do you want them to?” asked Alia. “Sounds kind of romantic... the lake, a dark young man...”

“Hissing bizarre threats with my childhood best friend floating dead in the water nearby... yeah, that’s my kind of romance!” retorted Lily, as she swung her heavy bag of books over her shoulder and let Alia exit before her.

******

“What’s your problem, Evans? You don’t sleep at night? How do you expect to succeed? My mum always says...” The words were fading out. They came from a familiar, harping male voice.

Classes burned slowly for Lily all day, and she spent a lot of time gazing at clocks, rubbing her eyes and doodling on her assignments, another night’s bad sleep catching up on her.

“What’s with you?! Are you even listening to me?!” Frank Longbottom was demanding all throughout Transfiguration. She usually was competing with him to finish the day’s assignment, but Frank had long been finished and at first looked over at Lily smugly, but after a half an hour, became nervous and moved to sit behind her and hiss warnings.

“You’ll FAIL! FAIL, you hear me?” Longbottom insisted.

“Is he going to be doing that all lesson?” Debra asked Lily fretfully.

“Go away, Longbottom,” Lily hissed back at him. He did so, but with baleful glances.

Lily had had yet another dream, the worst of the bunch despite handing over the Voldemort-look-alike photo to Regulus two weeks ago. She had hoped the dreams would have stopped as soon as the photo left its residence on her bedside table.

The trade completed, Regulus had pocketed the photograph and then had the nerve to ask Lily out. She tried not to think of it, instead turning her thoughts to the horrifying series of dreams she was having, which were much nicer to think about then letting Regulus Black snog her.

In the dream she had had the night before, she was on the shore of the lake again. While walking she had found the bloated hand floating on the foggy surface of the lake. She reached down to touch it, but before she could... Potter had shown up. And it wasn’t the monster this time, but the real Potter. That had actually been a strangely pleasant part of the dream that made Lily turn a violent shade of red, as she thought of it in class. They had been kissing, which had not been in any way terrifying, when suddenly Potter had seized up and fallen, which was. He was lying on the ground, very dead. She had screamed and screamed, and then Ada had come by, laughing. She'd told her to try to reanimate him. Lily had woken up screaming at five in the morning, waking her dorm mates, who were now ready to have her certified.

“You should see Pomfrey,” Alia hissed at her, over her own completed Transfiguration work. “You look like Hell.”

“And say what?” Lily whispered back.

“Tell her the truth, and then maybe she’ll hand over some sleeping potion or something? Something that will get you a peaceful night’s sleep! I swear that Marva wet herself this morning when you started up yelling bloody murder!”

“I wonder when Dale will get back to me,” Lily murmured. “I sent him Asta thirteen days ago!”

“He’s living in Muggle land, remember?” Alia sighed. “He can’t just start owl messaging in the middle of the street, can he?” She phrased this as a serious question. “Or can he?”

“No, he can’t. But Asta is a good owl; he wouldn’t drop it in the middle of the ruddy street... well, not a letter anyway,” she added with a gleeful snort.

“Hey, Evans...” Sirius whispered, as he leaned over from the desk just behind her. Lily saw that Professor McGonagall was turned away from them. She offered him her attention, knowing that Alia was shaking out her hair or something just as funny over her shoulder for his benefit.

Oblivious to whatever form of temptation Alia was using, he whispered with a snicker, “I heard your boyfriend was spending a lot of time in the girls' lavatory.”

“Do the toilets speak to you?” Lily asked, studying him head to toe methodically. She added, “Looks like you got a bit too close to one in the conversation. You should be careful about that.”

Frank snorted. “Sirius has a swirly!” The ‘Swirly’ was a head dunk in the toilet. This form of torture was allegedly invented by James Potter, but Lily, experienced with primary Muggle school, was quick to discredit him.

Giving Longbottom a sideways look, Sirius replied, “Well if you count Moaning Myrtle as a toilet, then yes. And if you talk about my hair again, I’ll make you all regret it. Anyway, she told me all about Ralph Venkmen visiting the girls' toilet a lot to see her.”

“Oh... well, it’s true what she says...” Lily placed the back of her hand on her forehead theatrically and gazed sadly at the ceiling. “I broke it off with Ralph when I heard! To be jilted for another woman, even if she’s dead, is something I can never forgive, you see!”

“Well, ol’ Myrtle didn’t mention anything like that, thank Merlin!” Sirius muttered. Then he asked, “Did you hear anything about your boyfriend’s toilet adventures?”

Lily stared at him with her tired eyes for a few moments, incredulously, before replying, “I promise you that I know nothing about adventures involving the toilet... concerning Ralph or anyone else for that matter. Are you going to tell me what this is all about or are you just here to look pretty, I need to know so I can decide whether or not I actually have to listen to what your saying, see.”

Smiling ruefully over his shoulder at the table he came from, probably at Potter, Sirius turned back to Lily and said, “No need to get snippy Evans, Myrtle said that Ralph Venkmen was having a nice chat with my little brother in a stall. It made me curious.”

This earned Sirius a full half a minute of shocked blinking followed by, “You mean Regulus?!”

Pleased with himself, Sirius said, “So you know my little brother then? You’ve had the great pleasure of conversing with him?”

“Oh, yes,” Lily replied. “In fact, he got a bit romantic with me a few times. You should have him neutered, for the good of all mankind.”

“Believe me, I’m not disagreeing!” Sirius replied back, darting a covert glance at McGonagall before moving stealthily into the seat next to Lily. “Aren’t you wondering what your boyfriend Venkmen and my little brother Regulus were doing together in the girls' toilet?”

“May I bring up the good of all mankind again when I say that maybe it’s best we let sleeping dogs lie?”

“You’re dying to know,” Sirius said, chuckling.

“Maybe. Are you going to tell me?” she asked.

“I don’t bloody know why they were in there. Apparently Myrtle’s interest didn’t extend towards their actual conversation.”

“Well, what did she say she saw?”

“I couldn’t get any more out of her! She started screaming and crying because James flushed the toilet.”

“So? You’d think she’d be used to flushing by now!” Lily sighed.

“Ah, well she was standing in said toilet at the time,” Sirius explained with a jovial grin.

“That’s disgusting,” she commented with a thoughtful repose, as she wondered what it would be like to be flushed down a toilet.

“I suspect he couldn’t resist the entertainment value of the venture,” Sirius gave by way of explanation. “And it really was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, now she’ll never tell you about Ralph and your brother,” Lily said, shaking her head.

“Which brings me to why I’m here,” Sirius said, folding his hands on the table.

“It does?” Lily asked warily, sensing that she was about to be asked to find Moaning Myrtle and pry the information from her.

“I’d like you to find Moaning Myrtle and try and pry it out of her,” Sirius said. “Seeing as how you have a vested interest in this. Nearly as much as I do anyway.”

“Oh, good. I was just thinking that I hadn’t had enough quality time in the lavatory,” Lily snapped, and then added quickly, “Why do you want to know so badly?”

“Let’s just say I want to keep an eye on my brother. He’s still got time to turn out to be a productive member of society, or even a not so productive one,” he jabbed a thumb into his shirt, “like myself. But he’s always had a bit of a violent streak and the Dark Lord is a bit of an attraction for him. Not to mention that nearly every other member of the family is mental. It doesn’t look good for him, but I’d like to at least be able to say I tried.”

This bought Lily’s sympathy. “Okay, whatever... but how in the world do you think I can get Myrtle to tell me what I want to know? She’s not exactly helpful.”

“Come on... it’ll be easy. Just butter the old ghoul up and she’ll go on for hours.”

“You are so naive,” Lily said, rolling her eyes for effect. “You do realize that Myrtle only talks to you to flirt? She never bothers with us girls, unless to taunt us while we’re trying to have a pee.”

“I see,” said Sirius. He rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful, a fetching look for him. Lily smiled as he went on like this and a few girls at the next table leaned over with open-mouthed glee.

“We’ll need a boy then,” he concluded.

“Bravo Sherlock... you should make Potter do it!” Lily couldn’t resist saying.

Sirius grinned widely at the mention of his friend. “You could ask him to do it...”

“I was joking, Myrtle won’t talk to Monsieur Flusher!”

“James? Oh, Myrtle will talk to James any day. She’s not the only girl who thinks she can change a man,” he remarked sagely.

“You sound like my mother,” Lily replied, resting her chin on her hands. “But since I’m not doing my work anyways, it makes for a nice diversion. Go on...”

Sirius continued with a widening grin, “Myrtle is James’ biggest fan! He has to go without baths some days because she’ll be in there gawking and won’t go away!”

This information caused Lily to cry with mirth for several minutes. She did it under the table, so McGonagall wouldn’t see. When she was finished she came back up, looked at Sirius, then went back under the desk and laughed soundlessly for another two minutes.

“Okay, okay...” Lily sighed happily, wiping her eyes and smoothing her curls back. “That was good, thanks for that...”

“Any time. So how are you going to get him to talk to Myrtle for you? Maybe you should wear something revealing?” he said, eyeing her.

“BLACK! MISS EVANS!” shouted McGonagall from the other side of the room, where two Hufflepuffs were fighting over a bottle of love potion. “Less chit chat from the both of you! Honestly, has someone replaced my class with a pack of baboons?!”

“What do I look like? A one-stop trampathon?” Lily asked Sirius, as soon as McGonagall had turned her back again. She crossed her arms unhappily. “If you want someone to literally suck the will out of Potter, maybe you should go find Lydia Westwood or someone.” Lydia was an older girl in their Muggle Studies class who, while she was nice, took the gold medal from even Alia in the vapidity act when boys were around.

“Hmm,” Sirius replied, struggling to make his face impassive. “I don’t think Prongs would be stupid enough to fall for that with Westwood. Besides, she’s already having a go at it every week. Other than being amused for a couple hours, he doesn’t seem to be any more compliant in my investigation of the girls’ toilet incident. No, what we need is you. If you make it seem like it would be very impressive to talk to Moaning Myrtle, then he definitely would do it.”

Lily frowned and still had her arms firmly crossed. She wished she had never brought up Lydia. Now she would wonder about it for days, then after that she would wonder who else Potter was being ‘amused’ by after classes.

“Is he dating Westwood then?” she asked in as even a voice as possible, “I didn’t know that... and look who my best mate is!” She gestured to Alia behind her at the desk, who was composing twelve separate notes detailing their supposedly private conversation, next to a ‘In' and ‘Out’ pile of paper aeroplanes.

“Bothers you, does it?” Sirius asked smugly. “Maybe you should do something about it? But only after you get him in the ladies toilet. I wish I could come along... but I bet you work your magic better without an audience, eh?”

McGonagall had come within earshot of their hushed conversation, but much to Lily’s confusion, all she did when Sirius kept talking was to bat at the air.

“Don’t worry about our Professor, Remus must have done Muffliato. All she can hear when we talk is obnoxious buzzing.”

“You’re a deranged young man,” Lily replied. “But I like the way you think. When should I ask him?”

“After practice in two days. It’s pretty much the only time when people are sick of him and don’t hang around...”

“Is he really that popular?” Lily asked with confusion. “He’s always such a-”

McGonagall, glaring into space like a vicious cat, began slapping the air again. Many of the class stopped what they were doing and watched her war with nothing with solemn interest. [Changed word order]

“Git?” Sirius finished Lily’s trailing sentence. “You’d be amazed at how much of that is just an act. He’s a pretty normal guy usually.”

“Yeah, normal. Who doesn’t like flushing ghosts and school banners down the toilets? Who can’t resist using Snape as a punching bag in their free time?”

“You don’t know anything,” Sirius grumbled, as he regarded McGonagall attacking the air. “So he has a tendency to break some rules? They were made to be broken. I figured you to be the kind of person who’d be into that. Guess I was wrong though... you’re the one who is an act,” he stated disdainfully.

At this point the quill scratching just behind Lily stopped. She turned and saw that Alia was staring off into space so Sirius would not know she was listening, and raising her eyebrows. She just barely made eye contact with Lily and then shaped her hand into a vicious cat claw.

Laughing, Lily turned back towards Sirius and said, “Everyone’s an act, Black, and apparently mine is to get your mate to sing to Myrtle. Well, I’ll get the job done. Afterwards you can let Potter tell you all about it.”

“No,” he said, with a hint of annoyance. “I bet he won’t say anything. If it involves you, he bloody well won't mention it to me. So you’ll have to let me know what Myrtle tells you both.”

He then got up and made a big production of hurling himself around the front of the room to take out McGonagall’s invisible fly. Half the girls in the class erupted into excited applause over Sirius’ performance, which ended only after he had jumped into three potted plants, upended a waste basket and sent a cup of quills flying at the front row of students, splattering residual ink all over their robes. Satisfied with the mess he had made, he went back to his seat.

“Did you hear what that huffy git said to you?” Alia demanded of Lily in a scandalized tone that caused Frank Longbottom and several others within earshot to lean forward to eavesdrop. Everyone liked to know what Sirius and his kind were up to as much as possible – it was a sort of insurance policy really. Usually their hushed conversations were a prelude to some sort of glorious disaster, and it was much better to not be caught in the crossfire.

“I know!” Lily said, with giddy laughter. She couldn’t help being a bit pleased with herself, though she couldn’t quite point to what the source of her happiness was. Was it Potter’s best mate thinking she could influence him better than Lydia Westwood, or the fact that she would have a clear shot at snooping on Regulus Black?

“You know something, Lily,” Alia said quietly, much to the irritation of Longbottom, who wanted to hear too. “I think Potter still really likes you for some reason. Why else would Sirius ask you to do this? I would just ignore that whole thing about Lydia Westwood. Who hasn’t she snogged? Honestly, Westwood is worse than I am, and that’s saying something now.”

Lily whispered to Alia, “But what about you? Don’t you like him?”

“I think it’s going to be way more beneficial standing aside and being a spectator for all this...” Alia replied vaguely.

“Um, okay... I think,” Lily said with a hesitant smile.

******

As it turned out, Lily didn’t have to corner anybody after Quidditch practice.

“All right, Evans?” came a male voice from above, as she was walking up to the Owlery the following day.

Potter had all the looks of having just sent a letter; he was pale from the chilly air of the Owlery. But the first thing she noticed about him was a small red line near his bottom lip, some sort of cut. He often had odd injuries, even during the off season.

Caught quite off guard, Lily cast around awkwardly for something to say to keep him where he was for a bit longer. Their short silence was interrupted by an owl shrieking inside the Owlery, which made them both cringe and laugh.

“I’ll put down twenty galleons that bird belongs to Longbottom,” Lily cried, while covering her ears as the shrieking of the animal continued for several more seconds.

Potter chuckled. “They do say that people resemble their pets.”

“I could laugh at Longbottom all day,” Lily replied happily.

“Yes... if you want we could-” he began, but then they were interrupted by the presence of several Slytherins stomping up the stone steps after Lily.

“You look much better after rolling around in lake slime, Potter!” Osman Shodwick drawled. Lily was sure the three boys would try to start something with him, especially after the Inferi ambush on the pitch. She looked to see what his reaction to them was, but all he did was smirk and step aside in mock politeness so they could get past.

“And you look better from very far away, Shodwick!” Potter replied earnestly as the Slytherin boys went past them to enter the Owlery.

A large boy named Herman Bode leered at Lily for quite a long time, until finally Potter snapped, “Watch where you’re going, Bode, or you’ll walk right off the tower... not that I wouldn’t mind seeing you plummet to your death really. It's just that there's a girl here.”

Lily thought she heard Bode mutter something about blood filth, but the picture Potter had created in her mind of him falling over the side of the tower prevented her from worrying about it.

“We could push him,” she suggested.

“You know what’s scary...” Potter remarked slowly, “I think I’d do it.”

Lily didn’t have anything to say to this. She cleared her throat in the chilly air and muttered, “Well, if you can commit murder, then me asking you to chat with Myrtle will be nothing.”

He smiled. “What’s that about Myrtle?” he asked. Obviously he hadn’t quite comprehended her. “You know, I just saw Moaning Myrtle not too long ago...” His fingers toyed with one of the massive stones on the ramparts overlooking the grounds far below as he continued, “We were in the boys’ toilet, and she came in out of a sink and was telling me and my mates that Regulus was much nicer to her than Sirius was... so we get to asking her about Regulus, Sirius' brother, and she tells us that she met him in the girls' toilet last Spring. But he wasn’t alone... according to Myrtle, he was in a stall with Ralph Venkmen. It’s not true, probably. But it was such a funny thing to say...”

“That is pretty funny... but I think it might be true. Nann Green saw the same thing, though she only saw Ralph.”

“Wonder what that git was up to?” Potter muttered. He didn’t reveal if he was referring to Ralph or Regulus.

“I wonder…” Lily sighed lamely, afflicted with a loss for words.

“Moaner was getting around to saying more but I... accidentally flushed her down the U-Bend,” Potter said ruefully.

“If you’re sweet to her, I bet she’ll tell you more...”

“Yeah, but who cares? Frankly, I think it’s better for everyone if we just don’t ask!” he said with a grin.

She had said basically the same thing herself when the subject was brought to her. Smiling at him with this thought, she then remembered what Sirius had said about making Potter feel as if talking to Myrtle would be impressive.

“I bet,” she started, “that no one is brave enough to talk to Myrtle...”

Potter looked amused at this idea. “Really? She’s not exactly scary as much as she’s annoying.”

“Exactly!” Lily manoeuvred. “They’re all terrified of her obnoxious behaviour... you’d have to be a really clever wizard to be able to overlook it and dig for information from her! Especially on someone like Regulus! Clearly, he’s up to something vile with his Slytherin mates. He asked me out the other week... I said no, of course, because I wasn’t at all interested, but also because I was... uh, afraid that it was all a trick to get me. You know... me being a Muggleborn, they would likely want to do something bad... to uh... hurt me,” she invented wildly, and was surprised to see that, just like Sirius predicted, Potter was eating it up.

His face went from thoughtful consideration to anger as she spoke. “What did he do when you said no?” he asked quickly.

Truthfully, all Regulus had done was shrug as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, having the Black trait of thinking he was better than everyone else.

“I forget,” Lily replied. He was smiling at the look of perfect ignorance she had fixed on her face, and she had a slight suspicion that he knew she was lying.

“Well, should we talk to Myrtle then?” Potter asked. “I just wonder why Venkmen didn't mention his conversation with Regulus before.”

“He’s sort of intimidated easily,” Lily offered up a bit of fiction.

“Well, I’m not,” Potter explained, looking a bit puffed up. “I’ll get to the bottom of it, I promise.”

“I’m coming with you!” she said.

“That would probably be a good idea. It’ll look much better if I was caught in the girls’ toilet with you, than by myself, I’d think.”

This earned him a laugh. “So when should we find Myrtle?”

“You know, she always seems to turn up in the Prefects’ bathroom...” he said with an earnestly forlorn expression.

Lily fought hard not to laugh again; instead she asked as they stepped up the stairs, “I didn’t know you used our bathroom too...”

“I’m Captain,” he explained, still looking quite puffed up, in Lily’s opinion. For once though, it was sort of cute rather than dismaying.

“I’ve never seen you there,” she said as she walked through the open doorway into the Owlery.

“Well! There’s more than one, see,” he explained eagerly. “When girls walk through the door they get sent to the girls' bathroom and boys to the boys'. And it’s infallible. Trust me, I’ve tried to figure out a way around it.”

Potter watched her call her owl, Asta, down from a high rafter where he was communing with his kind. Both owl and boy occasionally flicked a glare at the three Slytherin boys to keep them in check as Lily composed a quick note to Dale. She tied it to Asta’s leg and sent him off.

Seeing the addressee’s name, Potter asked, “How’s Percy doing?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lily said seriously. “He hasn’t written back to me in a while.”

“So... what are you doing now? Maybe we can try and find Moaning Myrtle?” Potter asked hesitantly.

“Well... if we do, we have to try her toilet,” Lily pointed out, “because if we walk through the door in the Prefects’ bathroom, we’ll end up in different places.”

“Right!” said Potter. “So, I guess I will be doing time in the girl’s toilet. Ah, well...” he sighed. “Let’s go...”