The Transfiguration Assignment

Chapter Four

James slouched in his chair, nervously running a hand through his untidy hair, making it even untidier. He didn't know why he was nervous, but he was, for some odd reason. It wasn't as if this was a date or anything...

Groaning, he leaned forward and put his face in his hands. He couldn't believe that had just gone through his mind! If anyone knew without a doubt that this wasn't a date, it was him. He had enough experience with Lily that he knew if she looked at him without glaring, or threatening to hex him, she was either going mad or had been the victim of a particularly strong Cheering Charm.

And why was he thinking about dates, anyway? This was just a stupid Transfiguration assignment. Schoolwork was probably the farthest thing from a date. And anyway, Lily hadn't ever said yes to him, and he'd been asking her out steadily for almost three years...

James shook his head. He didn't really understand why she kept saying no. He was an alright bloke--no Death Eater or creepy perv like some guys he knew. He was brilliant at schoolwork, brilliant at Quidditch, brilliant at planning pranks... According to Lily most of those things made him a conceited prat who didn't think of anyone but himself. James thought this was unfair. Yes, sometimes smart or popular people were conceited and selfish, but he didn't think he was. He tutored second-years in Transfiguration, studied hard, even if it didn't seem like it, and tried to be friendly whenever possible. True, the Marauders were his and Sirius's idea: he did prank a ton of people, but everyone deserved a good laugh every now and then. And yes, perhaps he was a little cheeky in class, but the teachers didn't mind, it made class interesting. Hell, he swore he'd seen McGonagall all out smirking the other day when he told Orion Muws off for being a prat and not listening when McGonagall was talking, the stupid berk. Sure, he never made prefect (he wasn't much for rules, it was true) but that hardly seemed to have harmed him. He was Head Boy, for crying out loud!

Though James did have to agree somewhat with Lily: he had a suspicion that Dumbledore had completely gone off his rocker and turned mental when making him Head Boy. Lily as Head Girl was easy to understand. But him? He'd probably broken more school rules than all the rest of his class (not including Sirius, Remus, and Peter, of course) combined. He'd gotten detention for a number of things throughout the years; his record being two whole months last year for continually teasing Madam Beech-Clover's (the Hogwarts nurse) apprentice, Miss Pompfrey about her hair. It wasn't his fault if the girl had a crush on him and abused her power to get him to scrub hospital beds with her late at night--not that he wanted to. Poppy wasn't that good-looking of a bird and a bit too preoccupied with staying on as nurse-apprentice for James's tastes, but she was rather funny and it wasn't as if he had any power to stop her from giving him the detentions.

The Head Common Room door burst open just then, startling James from his thoughts. He sat up straighter and prepared to grin in greeting to the pretty redhead that was sure to come walking through the doors, but stopped halfway, gaping instead.

In front of him stood his best friend, and fellow Marauder, Sirius Black. His dark hair was long, but set off his angular face well, and his clothes looked tastefully rumpled, as if he'd just come from some serious snogging in a broom closet with some pretty bird. Sirius grinned and plopped down in a cushy armchair, folding his arms behind his head.

"So this is the Heads' Common Room, eh?" he asked, peering around the room, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Bit big for only two people." He looked slyly at James. "'Course...if you'd just be a pal and give up the password every now and then I wouldn't have to spend so much time and energy trying to break in, and then we Marauders could do what we do best--"

"Sirius, how many times must I tell you to butt out of Head business?" James asked, rather annoyed. He had been preparing himself for another meeting with Lily. A meeting where they'd have to talk and act courteously, a meeting where they'd be in close contact and stay up all night working and talking and planning and...

"Head business, huh?" Sirius snorted. "Is that what they're calling it now?"

James glowered at him. "We're supposed to be working on our Transfiguration project and you're not supposed to be here--"

"Jimmy, my boy," Sirius interrupted, a note of mock alarm in his voice, "You can't possibly be thinking of actually starting your assignment on time, can you? We Marauders should take pride in procrastinating, pulling pranks, teasing the female population of the school, hexing the Slytherin population of the school, and--"

"Save the speech, Sirius. I know all about the Code of the Marauders, seeing as how I helped write it," James said tiredly. He wasn't quite sure how to handle his best friend. Ever since last June... "Evans and I need to work and she's bound to show up any moment, so clear out, will you?"

Sirius looked rather affronted. "James, you know that I know that you know that we know that I know that you know that it's taken me nearly two months to crack the password on the portrait outside the door, and I do not intend to give up my rights as a breaking-and-entering friend of yours just so you and Evans can have some private snogging sessions--"

"Some private what, now?"

Both boys turned toward the portrait opening. James felt as if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice into his stomach and looked rather sick, while Sirius, not at all abashed, looked as if Christmas had come early.

"Snogging, Evans," Sirius repeated, raising an eyebrow. "You do know what that is, right?" He grinned in anticipation at the storm brewing in Lily's eyes.

Ignoring the comment, Lily turned to James. "What is he doing in here, Potter?" she whispered through clenched teeth. She looked furious. Her curly red hair had escaped any attempt to keep it tidy and was a therefore a large cloud around her head. Her green eyes flashed dangerously, and James was surprised by how much her mouth could get so thin as to resemble Professor McGonagall's.

"He found out the password and--"

"And I couldn't help myself, Lily-flower," Sirius interrupted. "I just had to see first hand what this place looks like. You hear so many rumors, you know." He grinned toothily at her, tapping his nose.

She rounded on him, dropping her bag on the ground and throwing her books on one of the nearby tables.

"You!" she said threateningly. "You're not supposed to be in here. This is the private common room for the Head Boy and Girl, and visitors are not allowed, not even if," and here she threw James a rather nasty look, "one of the Heads invites someone."

James held up his hands in surrender. "I didn't invite him here," he said, looking at Lily apologetically. "He invited himself. How was I to know that today would be the day that the Velma the Vivacious Hippo would crack and Sirius finally get the password?"

Lily stared at him for a moment, uncertain as whether to believe him or not.

She frowned and nodded slowly, as if reluctant to accept his word. "I wondered why her eyes were glazed over just now," Lily murmured. Then she glared at Sirius. "Not only have you come in here uninvited--and against the rules--you also probably damaged an important portrait that's just been doing her job--"

"Aw, lay off, Evans," Sirius yawned. "Now that I've got here and little Jamsie-poo isn't remotely interested, and you're both determined to be so boring, I think I'll leave." He stood up, strolling passed an incredulous Lily, aiming for the door. He paused, and looked back at James. "I think I'm going to go see how Moony's furry little problem is doing," he said meaningfully, and then he opened the portrait hole and was gone.

Lily stood there for a second, staring at the door.

"Sorry about him," James said, looking at her. "I think he's a bit mad."

Lily nodded absently, grabbing her bag and striding over to the table James was sitting at.

"He shouldn't have come," she muttered, under her breath, taking out her quill and notebooks.

"I know," James said carefully. "I told him off for coming. I told him we had work to do. He's just a bit cheeky is all."

Lily glanced up at him, a bit surprised that he had said as much to Sirius. She looked back down at her books. This was the first time she had ever really been in the Head common room with James alone before--at least to work for a number of hours. It was the middle of October and so far there hadn't been many Head duties they had to go through together. He seemed ready to work now. He had his books and quill, and was even a bit early, which was nice, and added to the apology she'd received from him in the morning.

Smiling to herself and flipping open her notebook, Lily folded her hands and looked at James expectantly. "First I think we should decide--and agree--what to do our project on," she said.

Where else would we start? he wondered to himself. He looked at her a little uncertainly. "Well...should we list some ideas first, then?" he asked.

Lily nodded, grabbed her quill and poised it above her notebook. She looked at him expectantly again. This was turning out better than she'd hoped. Let's see what you've got, Potter, she thought.

"Er..."

James was a bit disconcerted with Lily's attitude. They were supposed to work together--Maybe she was just testing him, to see if he had any ideas.

He took a deep breath and started, "Right...well, I suppose there's always human transfiguration--"

"I heard Jordan Bath and Charles Warrington discussing that," Lily interrupted promptly. "It's so overdone. Half the class is probably researching it, so 1) we'll be just like everybody else, and 2) all the books will be out of the library. And it's the most obvious topic; everyone already knows about it." She gave him a look. "But of course, this is brain storming, so no idea is a bad idea!" Scathingly, she wrote down human transfiguration in her tidy script in her notebook and looked back up at James, a small satisfactory smile tugging at her lips.

"Right..." James bit his tongue, holding back a retort. "Well then, we could do Switching Spells--"

"Please," Lily interrupted again. "We learned about that in fifth year." But she once again wrote down his suggestion with a strange smile on her face.

James gave her a dirty look. "Or Vanishing spells--"

"--again, fifth year--"

"--or Conjuring--"

"--it's N.E.W.T. level, but the half of the class that isn't doing human transfiguration will be doing Conjuring. I mean, obviously, to get on Professor McGonagall's good side--"

"We could always do Animagi." James was glared at her, an indignant look in his eyes. He'd given her five perfectly good assignment topics and she'd ripped them all to shreds almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

Lily stared at him incredulously. "Animagi? We learned about that ages ago! In third year, Potter--or, have you forgotten? Were you not paying attention back then?" Lily looked as if she would burst out laughing.

James frowned at her bad temperedly. "Alright, so we mentioned it fleetingly in third year. McGonagall demonstrated it to us the first day, but we didn't really learn about it." He paused for a moment. "If there have only been seven registered so far in this century, then it must be pretty difficult, right?" He sought her eyes. "If it's so easy why aren't there more? I imagine it takes quite a long time to go through all the steps and learn all the rules--plus the fact that the Ministry is involved and you have to register and everything. It's probably a hassle that a lot of people don't want to put up with." James paused again. "You like difficult stuff--Animagi should be difficult. Since it's so hard to do it's probably nearly impossible to find good books on it. Books that tell you how to do it as well as all the dangers and Ministry protocol and crap. You like challenges and could probably sniff out a book you wanted from ten miles away." James was warming up to the topic now, but wasn't sure what Lily thought of it. Since he knew so much about Animagi (for obvious reasons) it would be a breeze of an assignment to do, though perhaps a bit difficult not to accidentally give away that he was in fact an unregistered Animagus--especially while working with Lily, who was probably the cleverest witch in his year, not to mention a girl he wanted to impress.

Sighing, James shook his head and waited for a response from Lily. When none came, he said flatly, "I've given you six topics, and if you hate all of them, I'd be delighted to hear what you've got up your sleeve."

Lily bit her lip, thinking furiously. She hadn't thought that he'd be able to come up with such good ideas--true, one or two of them weren't the best (Vanishing? Please...), but the others weren't that bad. It was true that a few of them would be popular topics with the rest of the class, but all in all Lily was a bit pleased that James could think up so many topics so quickly. Last year they'd had a smaller, similar project about mammal transfiguration and Orion Muws had been her partner. It had been a disaster...he was as thick as a tree trunk and she'd had to do more than half the project by herself. At least it seemed James was willing to cooperate, especially after that little episode in the library (she wasn't very proud of it, but at least he was on time now). And it had always been rumored that James was a protégé at Transfiguration. If he was this fast at thinking up topics, perhaps he'd be some help in the research part of the assignment...

As to Animagi, Lily wasn't sure whether it was a good idea or not. True, they had learned about them in third year, but as James had said, it was fleetingly, and more of an introduction to the year than anything else. Not many people would choose a topic so remote, so they had a good chance of having an original topic. McGonagall was an Animagus, so it would be a bit of a suck-up job, but a subtle one.

Lily had never had a real curiosity about Animagi before. It was an interesting topic, it was true, but she didn't know much about it. It was curious that only seven people had registered so far in the century as Animagi, and there had to be a reason. Perhaps it was very difficult. Lily had heard that if attempted wrongly it could have disastrous results...

Lily turned to James in acceptance. "Do you know anything about Animagi?"