Stag Night

Stag Night

~ II ~

The New Crowd

Peter had fallen in with a bad crowd.

That’s how some--his parents or his clueless coworkers--might have seen it. Of course, James Potter and Sirius Black, in spite of their pure-blood pedigrees and top marks at school, had been called a “bad influence” by the elder Pettigrew and had been the source of endless hand-wringing from Peter’s mum, but that was years ago and they’d changed their minds about James since then.

Oh, it had begun in a small way, an occasional drink after work at the Golden Apple along with the usual grumbling about the bloody awful state of the world, about how purebloods didn’t seem to get much respect these days, about how Mudbloods were running things at the Ministry (yes, you could say those things at the Golden Apple without raising any eyebrows). His new friends were all purebloods, just a group of working blokes that liked a pint or two after work. Maybe his new friends didn’t make him laugh the way Sirius and James did nor come up with as many daring and ridiculous adventures. In school, the four of them had been free to roam the Forbidden Forest and the secret passages of Hogwarts castle so long as they didn’t get caught. The real world wasn’t like that.

Jack Travers was one of Peter’s new friends, not a complicated or deep person, just a regular guy who liked a drink at the end of the day and a good laugh. Jack was in the trades--he hadn't even gone to Hogwarts--and he worked at the stationer, Alexander & Co., as an apprentice parchment-maker. One of his jobs was to deliver rolls and rolls of parchment to offices like Fishbone, Mullion and Pettigrew.

And they did go through the parchment at the law firm as the solicitors called on Peter and his fellow clerks to copy out version after version of legal briefs. Magic couldn’t be applied to the production of such documents because the Court of Magical Law would not accept an enchanted document as legally binding even if there were only a Copying Spell on it. So when old Mr. Bartelby, Peter’s boss, came sweeping into the clerks’ room in the Deeds and Bequests Department demanding the fifteenth revision of a will, Peter would sharpen his quill and reach for a fresh roll of parchment.

Jack stopped by the office two or three times a week bearing great loads of parchment in his brawny arms. His blue eyes danced restlessly when he dished out sly winks and outrageous compliments, making the female staff blush and giggle. For some reason, he’d usually end up talking to Peter about something or other: Quidditch, or some joke that’d he’d heard, or something one of the girls had said.

Peter hadn’t been at the firm more than a couple of weeks before Jack suggested they go out for a drink after work. Peter had accepted, grateful to be away from the mountains of parchment and rivers of ink, or so he saw the geography of his desk at the end of the day.

“What about England in the semi-finals, eh?” Jack said as he set down two pints of Baddock’s Special Pumpkin Porter on the table. He had pale blue eyes and a round baby face topped with a shock of straw-colored hair. The perpetual five o’clock shadow on his jaw contrasted with his boyish features and could make Jack seem downright sinister, but only on those rare occasions when he wasn’t laughing or grinning.

“Er, well, the Italians, you know,” Peter said, more interested in looking around the pub than in the World Cup standings.

He’d never been to the Golden Apple, the pub located at the end of Diagon Alley and near the entrance to Knockturn Alley. Too near, some said. Peter took a tentative sip of his beer and scanned the room apprehensively.

The landlord, a tall, plump man, presided jovially over a noisy, crowded bar. Quidditch had a definite presence in the pub; team banners, posters and signed photographs of players festooned the walls, giving Peter a rather dizzying feeling as players on broomsticks zoomed in and out of the pictures. For the most part the witches and wizards at the bar or seated at tables seemed normal. Perhaps there were a few too many Slytherins for Peter’s comfort. He recognized Rosier and Wilkes from his Hogwarts’ days, but they didn’t see him, which was a great relief since they had always been keen to give Peter a thrashing at school if they caught him alone.

But Peter wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t a schoolboy any more.

“Damn right, Peter,” Jack said. He took a long drink of thick orange-brown beer and set the glass down with a satisfied thunk.

Peter thought that he’d missed something--Quidditch was never one of his strong points--but Jack grinned at him as if he’d just said something profound.

“The Italians have Volpicelli and Demarco,” Jack went on, “but what have they got for a Keeper, eh? If England had some halfway decent Chasers, there’d be a chance. What about that friend of yours--Potter? Think he’d play for us? He was damned good at Hogwarts.”

“James? James Potter, you mean?”

“Yeah, bloke with the black hair and glasses. I’ve seen him stop by your office, so I thought you were friends.”

“Yes, um, we were friends at school,” Peter answered, suddenly embarrassed for reasons he couldn’t fathom. “But James works for the Ministry now and I guess it keeps him pretty busy.”

It might have sounded like a lame excuse, unless you knew James, who would throw himself into a new enterprise with an intensity that Sirius called “Potter-fection”. Where Sirius would noisily wrestle with a task until he mastered it (even at the expense of a bit of collateral damage along the way), James would quietly focus on attaining perfection. His career as Head Boy had been like that; he never cared much about holding the job when they were younger, but once it had fallen in his lap, James had to be the perfect Head Boy. While this gave the four of them something to laugh about when they managed to sneak out of school for proscribed adventures, in public James was rather insufferable to his friends as well as to everyone else during their seventh year. Potter-fection. There was no other explanation.

“Ah, well,” Jack shrugged, “we could use a couple better Chasers. And a new Seeker.”

“Hungerford’s pretty good,” Peter said, eager to display some knowledge of the game, however meager. “Been playing for the Tornados for what--three years?”

“She’s a Mudblood, Peter,” Jack said loudly with a dramatic shake of his head. “They just don’t have it in them. Quidditch is our sport. When you get right down to it, how can you expect bloody Muggles to understand it? You just can’t trust a Mudblood in a pinch. They’ll choke every time, mark my words, and Hungerford‘s no exception.”

Peter looked around nervously. If you uttered the word “Mudblood” in the Leaky Cauldron, conversation would stop at all the nearby tables and people would stare. But the other patrons in the Golden Apple gave no sign of having heard. Perhaps that should have been a warning, but he ignored it. Instead, he took a drink and felt a warm glow spreading inside him, a result of the strong beer, the close-packed room, and the grin on Jack Travers’s face. The Golden Apple was starting to seem like a nice enough place in spite of all he’d heard about it.

Summer peaked and faded, as did England’s hope for a shot at the Quidditch World Cup. As Jack Travers had foretold, England lost to Italy in the semi-final for lack of scoring. (Italy, however, were upset by Sri Lanka in the final, a four-day mudfest in Kuala Lumpur.)

Peter came to feel comfortable at the Golden Apple, more comfortable than traipsing around the countryside with Sirius or spending an evening with James and Lily. Oh, Lily was always kind to him, but she did seem to monopolize James, who was different somehow when he was with her. And James was actually going to marry her--that was just starting to sink in. They were planning the wedding and it made Peter increasingly nervous. He feared for his friend. Love was supposed to conquer all, but how could James ignore what was going on around them? James, who worked at the Ministry, should have seen.

Peter could see what was happening, dealing as he did with the shattered remains of people’s lives every day at work, with the steady stream of widows, widowers and orphans who came to change their wills or to listen to Mr. Bartleby read out the last will and testament of a loved one while they sobbed or hiccupped or moaned and Peter supplied endless cups of tea, handkerchiefs and tins of Haythornthwaite’s Digestive Tablets (“Magical Miracle-Cure for Aches of All Sizes and Shapes”).

Muggles and Muggle-borns were being killed left and right, though no one knew precisely how many. The whole subject was taboo, like the open cesspool at the edge of the village to which everyone contributes but that no one will fix when it backs up and starts flooding other people’s houses; or like the argument between Uncle Horace and Cousin Oswald that simmers below the surface at every holiday gathering and in which everyone in the family must take sides but no one talks about; or like the wounded stray dog that haunts the neighborhood, growling and begging for scraps while growing weaker, until one day it’s not there and no one wants to think about why or where it went.

If you don’t talk about it, will it go away?

Dumbledore had always maintained that if Muggle-born witches and wizards weren’t accepted and trained, the entire wizarding world would be the loser. Peter hadn’t really given much thought to the question while he was at school, but out in the real world, things were different. According to Jack Travers and the other regulars at the Golden Apple, all this so-called fairness led to purebloods marrying Muggles. There were more Squibs today than ever before and it all went back to Mudbloods and how they were diluting the ancient blood of true witches and wizards.

And in the face of all this, James Potter was going to marry a Mudblood.

Sirius twitched as he fought off another yawn. No, please, no, Peter silently begged Sirius to rally. He needed more time.

Time slowed to a crawl for Peter as he watched Sirius blink and shake his head. James gave a small, almost imperceptible nod and sat back in his chair ever so slightly. He was going to stand up, Peter knew, and then it would be over.

Slowly, ever so slowly, like pulling a spoon from a pot of treacle, Peter brought his hand out of his pocket.

“Wait!” he squealed. The shout took him, as well as the others, by surprise. Time resumed its normal course as he opened his hand, palm down, and slapped the table. The clink of metal against wood got everyone's attention. Peter's fingers trembled as he withdrew them to reveal an ornate gold key, almost as large as his hand.

“There is one more place that we might… a sort of a club, er, and I borrowed the key from Father…” Peter's voice trailed off as he looked at the three of them. He had gotten their attention, at least.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Sirius was first to respond, his eyes drilling into Peter.

“Tigerseye…yeah, that's what it's called. This, er, club--well, not exactly… my brother went there once and he told me--um, they have, you know, girls, that is, women there and--”

“You're really losing it, Peter,” Sirius concluded with a shake of his head, “if you think we'd be interested in some stuffy old lawyer's club.”

“No, not exactly… you see, it's a--”

Remus, irritated with Sirius for being so dense, surprised himself and the others by saying, “A brothel. Isn't that right, Peter?”

“A whorehouse?” roared Sirius, nearly choking with laughter. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Sirius and James peppered Peter with questions, but he was unable to string any coherent syllables together, let alone words. Remus ignored them and instead picked up the key. He weighed it in his palm. Dense enough to be gold, the key was surprisingly light because of the fine, filigreed patterns worked into it. Tendrils of gold wove around each other in an almost Celtic fashion. Tiny tigers crouched, hidden within the network of lines like jungle beasts on the prowl.

Remus was startled, yanked out of his jungle reverie, when James snatched the key away and asked Peter, “This is a key to a private club that is… where?”

“Seven Shoe Alley,” stuttered Peter. He gulped, as if called upon to swallow a lump of molten iron, and went on, “My brother went there and he told me--”

“Which brother?” Sirius asked sharply. “Not Simon, was it?”

“Paul. He works at the firm, y'know, and one time Father asked him to take a client out--”

“Okay. Paul doesn't have enough imagination to make up anything this interesting,” Sirius grunted. "Whoa, hang on. This key belongs to your father's law firm?"

“Er, yes, well they take clients there sometimes…” Peter started to sweat as much as he had in any of those nightclubs they'd visited. He hadn’t thought that the others wouldn’t believe him. They had to believe him.

“And you just borrowed this from your father?” James asked.

“Sort of… He's out of town right now, taking a deposition in Bavaria, but he likes you, James, you know. He's always telling me how I should be more like… Anyway, I'm sure that he would think, that is, he would approve if…”

“If only you'd bothered to ask him,” James finished. He rested his chin on his hands and stared at Peter with a mixture of wonder and disbelief.

“But, really, the firm does this all the time.” Peter bobbed his head up and down in what he hoped was an encouraging way.

“Let me see that.” Sirius grabbed the key, while James continued to fix his eyes patiently on Peter. “All right, let's assume for a moment that this key is what you say it is and that there is this… this private club in Seven Shoe Alley.” Sirius waved the key under Peter's nose and went on, “Lawyers go there so it must cost a small fortune -- which none of us has at the moment.”

“The firm has a sort of account there, you see, so it'll all be taken care of. And the books are so horribly messed up.” The others were transfixed as the words spilled out like water from a ruptured dam. “I know because sometimes I take lunch with one of the other clerks who works for Mr. Eisenhut in the Billing Department and she….” Peter blushed, a crimson tide slopping across his pale, quivering face. “…she says that they're about twenty years behind on getting the accounts squared away, but it all works out, you know, as we just bill more to cover expenses if we need to and--”

“It's nice of you to think of us, Peter, but…” Remus interrupted the river of babble, and then paused to look at each of them in turn. “James here needs some rest. We all do, not that some of us will admit it.” He glanced at Sirius, who was so transfixed by the key that he forgot to bark.

“I appreciate your efforts, Peter, I really do--” James began.

“And what about my efforts?” Sirius roared. “I’m the one who got beat up just to make sure you were having a good time tonight. Ha! We wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me talking you into proposing to her again after she turned you down the first time.”

“Sirius Black single-handedly arranges the Potter-Evans match?” snorted James. “I’m not so sure about that. If anyone deserves the credit for getting things started, it’s probably Peter.”

Sirius glared at James, but a smile danced at the corners of his mouth, temporarily squashed by righteous indignation.

“Me?” said Peter, looking from James to Sirius in a panicky way, as if they were both having one on him.

“I’d been trying to get Lily to go out with me for years and she wouldn’t give me the time of day until seventh year. It was your letter the summer before seventh year that made me think about going to see Lily before term started,” said James, “and she didn’t seem to think I was such a pointless git after that and--”

“I thought it was because you spent far too much time together in the prefects’ office. I seem to recall there’s a very large sofa there--convenient, eh?” Sirius grumbled, though he was grinning now.

“Gentlemen,” Remus said sternly, “do we intend to spend the rest of the evening debating? I suggest that there are better times to hold such a debate.”

James saw that Remus was grinning, too. He had stepped into the ring and taken on his sometime-role as referee for Prongs-Padfoot matches. Peter might be able to distract for a while, but only Remus could force the two combatants back into their corners.

“All right,” James laughed, holding up his hands, palms out, in mock-surrender. “I concede. I owe all my current happiness to Mr. Black.” But inwardly, he had to give Peter some of the credit. He thought back to the summer before seventh year and Peter’s letter. A simple letter. A simple journey. So it had seemed at the start.

The Tube was approaching his stop. At least he hoped that the unpleasant series of jolts and the noise like a suit of armor being dragged across a stone floor meant that they would soon be at Bethnal Green instead of in some metal-bending, bone-crunching crash. Apparating would have been a far more pleasant alternative--he already knew how, though he didn’t have a license--but the risk of the Ministry finding out was too great.

James looked around at his fellow passengers: older women clutching bulging shopping bags of various shapes and sizes; mothers with children of various shapes and sizes; old men who stoically read newspapers amidst the car’s rhythmic clacking, the whooshing of air, and now the groaning and shrieking of the brakes. Harsh lights gave an unnatural cast to the faces and the silence--no one talked or laughed or gave any sign of acknowledging anyone else--made James wonder if he hadn’t accidentally stumbled onto another species entirely. Gods, how did the non-magical masses stand being stuffed into claustrophobic cars that sped through these dark tunnels, tunnels that looked and felt like the vaults underneath Gringotts Bank? Only goblins could have designed the London Underground.

A chance remark from Peter, a bit of Hogwarts news, had started him on this journey. Girls confided in Peter for some reason and he was always the first to get new gossip over the summer holiday.

Dear James,

Or should I say, your Head Boyness? I can’t work out how you got the job, but it’s great! Snape is going to be so mad I bet his face will turn green even without hexing. Speaking of which, I ran into Elspeth Honeypecker in Diagon Alley yesterday and she told me she had it straight from Mandy Barnes that Lily Evans is Head Girl! How’s that for a nasty shock to a certain Slytherin gang?

Has it stopped raining long enough for a spot of Quidditch practise? Ha-ha. Father has relented and released me from clerking at the firm. Six weeks of copying out contracts is enough torture for me! I’m a free man, so come down to London if you can.

Peter

James had known that he’d have to pay Lily Evans a visit, if he could arrange to come to Town, as soon as he’d read Peter’s letter. He just hoped that he’d survive the trip through the bowels of Muggle London.

He stood and prepared to exit, tucking the unfamiliar and uncomfortable Muggle shirt into the stiff new jeans that he’d put on just for the occasion. The train lurched to a final stop and the doors opened. James allowed the crush of people to push through the doors ahead of him. He peered through the grimy windows and tried to read the name of the station. “Bethnal Green”. That was the right one. He dawdled so long that he had to jump through the doors just as they were closing.

While people milled around him, James stood for a moment on the poorly lit platform and wrinkled his nose at the various odors, most of them unfamiliar and all of them unpleasant. And it was hot, too, as if several day’s worth of summer heat had been concentrated underground. How did they come up with this as a way of getting around? Trains he could understand, at least the sort that chugged comfortably through the countryside, like the one that had brought him down to Town. But the Tube, as they called it, was a poor imitation of a train, more like a form of torture than a form of transportation.

He followed the stream of people up a moving staircase that bucked and creaked in a most unmagical way, suggesting hidden machinery. Once on the street, he blinked in the bright sunlight and tried to get his bearings. He took out the other letter and reread it; the directions sounded simple enough. He set off on what he thought was the right course and tried to make sense of the shops along the way; they sold many things, some he recognized, but others left him baffled. Why did Muggles need to clean a vacuum, for example? After seeing the mysterious machines in the window of the shop called “Vacuum Cleaners – New, Used and Repair,” he concluded that “vacuum” meant something entirely different to them. Perhaps a Muggle who wandered into Diagon Alley would be equally confused by “Ollivander’s Wands,” not to mention “Quality Quidditch Supplies.”

After a few false starts, he found the right street about a quarter-mile from the Underground station. There the houses were jammed up against one another on either side of the street in a long wall of dirty red brick. Didn’t anyone ever clean them? At home, for example, the house-elves diligently scrubbed the exterior brick on the manor house.

At first sight, all the houses seemed identical and he almost chucked the whole undertaking--he would walk to Diagon Alley, though, instead of attempting another ride on the Tube--but after staring at the street for a few moments, he could pick out individual houses in the way that one finally learns to tell one tree from another from another in a forest, even though they all look alike at first glance. Each of the houses had a dollop of a garden in front, some weedy and overgrown, some paved over, some full of garbage, and some bursting with flowers. The front of each house had a door precisely in the same spot, but the color varied from house to house, from somber to garish, although quite a few sported only peeling paint and rusting hardware. Most, but not all, doors had numbers on them.

The house with the number that he was seeking had one of the neater front gardens. Tall spikes of foxglove poked over the wrought iron fence and he recognized several common magical plants growing in neatly arranged pots. He paused as he checked his watch and was surprised to hear bees buzzing lazily in the late July sun here in the midst of a landscape of lifeless brick. After a moment’s hesitation, he strode purposefully up to the front door because James Potter always did things with purpose, no matter how nervous he felt underneath.

He knocked and the door was answered by a middle-aged woman wearing plain, Muggle clothing.

“Mrs. Evans?”

The woman nodded, and she looked at him so quizzically that he reached up to straighten his hair and wondered if there was something wrong with the Muggle clothes he wore.

“I’m James Potter, a friend of Ev--of Lily’s from school. I wrote to her and…”

“She did mention something about a chap from school.” The woman frowned and hesitated for a moment, but then stepped into the house and called up a set of stairs just inside the door, “Lily! Your friend from school is here!”

No answer was forthcoming. The woman twisted a kitchen towel that she held in her hands and looked upstairs expectantly. While they waited, James surveyed the small front room. The furniture, although not as dark and ornate as the Elizabethan-era furnishings he’d grown up with, looked normal enough, but the glaringly unfamiliar Muggle appliances--something that looked like a fishbowl full of nothingness trapped in a wooden box, lamps of odd sizes and shapes with black wires snaking off to some hidden realm, and other things that he couldn’t identify--reminded him how far he was from his childhood home, and from the wizarding world.

“Oh, dear. She’s been up in her room all day,” the woman said, more to herself than to James. “I don’t know why she won’t--” She broke off at the sound of a girl’s voice from somewhere on the ground floor; the voice was unfamiliar to James, shriller than Evans’s voice and with less of a London accent.

“Mummy! I need help with my hair and you haven’t hemmed by green dre--”

The girl strode imperiously into the front room. She was wearing a dressing gown and her hair was wrapped in a towel. Did Evans have a sister? The thin girl with the pinched face looked nothing like her.

“Who’s this, then?” The girl gave James an interested smile, while plucking at her dressing gown to straighten it.

“A friend of Lily’s from school.” Mrs. Evans smiled distractedly. “James… Potts, is it?”

“Potter,” he corrected.

“You don’t look like one of those freaks,” the girl said acidly. Her smile evaporated, replaced by a contemptuous sneer.

“Petunia!”

“Well, they are, Mum. But that’s Lily’s problem.” She smiled again, this time a frigid smile of sugar-coated disgust, and then turned on her mother, dismissing James entirely. “I can’t go to the party in that green dress as it is. The length has gone out of fashion. I told you yesterday! You just have to hem it. And I need to get started on my hair. I’ve got to be ready by five, you know. This is a terribly important party -- loads of the right people will be there -- and I can’t look like a fright, now can I?”

“Well, dear, why don’t you fix the dress yourself, and then I’ll help with your hair?” her mother said evenly. She smiled briefly at James and seemed slightly embarrassed, although he couldn’t tell if this was due to his presence or to her daughter’s behavior.

“I don’t know where the stupid dress is, do I?” said Petunia. “I gave it to you yesterday and you said you’d fix it for me.”

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Evans said to James. “I’ll just be a minute and then we’ll see about Lily.”

The two disappeared, but James could still hear them from somewhere in the house, Petunia whining about her dress while her mother lectured her on improving her manners.

After some minutes of standing awkwardly in the doorway, James began to wonder if Evans had really been serious in suggesting he come. He had written to congratulate her on becoming Head Girl. “Next time I come down to London perhaps we can get together and start planning out the year,” he’d said. She’d been pretty cool to him for most of sixth year, but her response to his letter had been polite, almost friendly. She had written back inviting him to visit if he was in Town--they’d agreed on this day at three o’clock in the afternoon--but maybe her invitation arose solely out of politeness; maybe she couldn’t be bothered with him. No, that was ridiculous. As Head Boy and Head Girl, they had decisions to make and events to organize. He hoped that she wasn’t charging ahead without him. Evans did have a reputation for taking matters into her own hands.

With a frown, James walked cautiously up the narrow staircase. At the head of the stairs was a closed door. The other doors were open, revealing two bedrooms and a bath that were empty as far as he could tell. Sunlight streamed through a tiny window in the bathroom and fell on the well-worn carpet in the corridor. Family photographs crowded the walls. He recognized red-haired Evans in several of them and confirmed that she looked nothing like her blonde sister. The voices downstairs could still be heard faintly, but all was silent upstairs. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether this journey to what seemed like a foreign country had been a good idea. But here he was, so he knocked on the only closed door in the corridor.

“Er, Lily? It’s James, James Potter.”

There was a rustling sound from inside the room and then silence. He waited, listening intently. The door opened and there stood Evans looking very much like a witch in a long full skirt and flowing top, a surprise in the midst of so much Muggleness. Her red hair, usually neatly pulled back, spilled haphazardly from an untidy knot on the top of her head.

“I’m sorry if I came at a bad time…” James trailed off, feeling like an idiot. She had “bad time” written all over her face, judging from the red-rimmed eyes and the hard set of her mouth. She met his eyes briefly and then looked down, shuffling the pieces of paper that she held in her hands.

“I did say that you should come, didn’t I?“ She frowned and bit her lip. “But perhaps this isn’t the best…maybe you should…”

“Well, I can understand how you might be upset,” he said with a smile that he hoped would be disarming. “The sight of James Potter has been known to make Slytherins quake with fear. As Head Boy I am, of course, going to strike fear in the hearts of all students, Slytherin or not. I’ve been doing a correspondence course over the summer on striking fear in the hearts of men and, er, women. Do you think it’s working? You might want to give it a try. Do wonders for you. And you could practice on your sister.”

She looked up at him, green eyes shining, and smiled the nicest smile that James could ever remember. It was as if she’d never smiled before and it dazzled him in spite of the way she looked--or maybe because of it.

“Now there’s something I hadn’t thought of,” she said with a sniff and hastily wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.

The amusing patter that usually sprang forth effortlessly from James’s lips had temporarily dried up and he couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. A movement caught his eye as one of the pieces of paper she’d been holding escaped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. He reached down to retrieve it, determined to prove himself useful.

“You don’t have to--” she said with an urgency that James didn’t understand, not at first. She fixed her gaze on him, her cheeks reddening.

“Sorry. None of my business, is it?” James flushed slightly as he stood and hoped she wouldn’t notice. He thrust the paper toward her. “Look, I’ll just go now and we can meet at school at the start of term, or send owls if we--”

“Yes… No.” She sighed and pointed at the paper that he’d retrieved. “Look, you might as well see this now. Go on. Read it. You’re not the only one who’s heard that I’m to be Head Girl. I got three owls today and I’m sure there’ll be more.”

Puzzled as to whatever could have provoked such a reaction in the normally cool Lily Evans, James unfolded the paper, actually a scrap parchment that had been torn roughly on one edge. The letters were spiky and angry-looking, the words hurriedly written and smeared in places.

They shouldn’t let trash like you into Hogwarts. You are an abomination and should never have been picked for Head Girl. Step aside and let a real witch have the job.

“And the others… they’re like this?” said James in an even tone. He stared at the paper as he spoke, reluctant to meet her eyes.

“Worse.” She laughed bitterly and turned away, long skirt swirling in her wake as she sat down on the end of a narrow bed that nearly filled the tiny room. A window next to the bed faced the street with its row of nearly identical houses whose windows stared back like a crowd of strangers at the scene of a tragic accident.

“You can’t let a few nasty letters stop you.” James leaned against the doorframe and stared at her profile.

“Just forget it. You wouldn’t understand,” she said in a low voice. For a moment there was only the soft swish of paper on paper as she turned the other letters over and over in her hands. When she looked up at him, the pain in her green eyes had flared into anger. “I thought you should know that there might be trouble, but it’s not your problem, all right?”

“Of course it is!” James shot back. “Anything that undermines our authority is my problem too. Let me see the others.”

“You’re a pureblood, aren’t you?” She jumped up suddenly and grabbed the letter from him, waving it at him as she went on, her voice edgy and brittle, “Do you know that I’m only the second Muggle-born ever to be appointed Head Boy or Head Girl? There wasn’t even a half-blood chosen until 1944! According to these vile notes, I’m going to be polluting Hogwarts and all of the wizarding world merely by existing.”

“And your ‘mere’ existence proves them wrong!” cried James. “No, more than that. You’re one of the best witches in our year and having you as Head Girl shows up all that ‘purity of blood’ stuff as utter rubbish. Don’t you see?”

She stared at him, mouth open. He realized that he’d been shouting, realized just how much taller he was and that he loomed over her, filling the doorway like some menacing madman.

“Sorry,” he said, ducking his head and looking down at his feet.

Without a word, she handed him the other letters, then sat once more on the bed. A painful knot formed in his stomach as he unfolded the first piece of paper.

Mudblood bitch. Hogwarts is better off without filth like you. Beware.

The last one was worse.

if you set foot in school ill rip you’re heart out and all you mudblood friends to

His insides twisted, as if he’d been punched in the gut, and he felt his limbs grow cold; anger coiled up inside him, poised to strike. Only he didn’t know whom or what to strike. Anger dissolved into frustrated confusion and his head began to throb. Neither of them spoke for some time. She poked at the floor with her foot, obsessively smoothing an already smooth rug.

“Oh, I know you’re right about… about showing them,” she sighed, “but sometimes I…”

“Hey, now,” James said softly and sat beside her. “You’ve got me, the Head Boy who strikes terror into the hearts of Hogwarts rule-breakers. I certainly won’t put up with any of this nonsense, and neither will the prefects or the teachers.”

“Thanks,” she said simply, her eyes still downcast. “I hope you’re right, I really do.”

“Well, maybe a certain Slytherin prefect will be a bit bent out of shape, but you leave him to me.” James blustered, trying his best to jolly her along and banish the darkness that seemed to have settled around her shoulders like an unseen mantle.

“I’m not so sure about that.” She looked up at him and he was pleased to see that a spark of amusement had returned to her green eyes. “After what happened last year at the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, I’m not sure that we can leave a certain Slytherin to you. The Head Boy can’t go around transfiguring his least favorite people into toads after all.”

“Sod it all! Er, I don’t suppose Head Boys are supposed to say that either.”

“Maybe you should have been taking a course in how to be a proper Head Boy,” she said with a chuckle.

“Proper Head Boy?” James snorted. “I’ll have you know that--“

“Freaks. You’re going to be in so much trouble.” Petunia had appeared in the doorway, still wearing her dressing gown and clutching an acid green something-or-other, probably the party dress. She gave Lily a nasty smirk and then yelled, “Mum! Lily’s got that boy in her room!”

“We were just talking shop, Wizard-talk, you know,” James said with a smile that he knew to be fairly irresistible to members of the opposite sex, “talking about a spell for turning a person into a toad, don’t you know, and wondering about how to get just the right shade of green. Your dress, for example, would be a marvelous color for a toad. Do you mind if we test it on--”

“Mum!” Petunia shrieked, twitching, prepared to run away like a flightless bird on the verge of extinction.

James stood up and took a step toward her. She whirled around and fled into one of the other bedrooms; the door slammed behind her. Lily had one hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud and clutched her stomach with the other. James liked the way her eyes sparkled--he always had--and he laughed, too.

“Freaks, are we? Good Lord, your sister’s just as bad as any of those Slytherins up at school,” James chuckled, but then grew serious. “You’re not going to get in trouble, are you?”

“No,” she said with a sigh, “but let’s not give her any more ammunition. We’d better go downstairs. I’m sorry for taking up your time with my silly problems. We didn’t even get round to talking about the new term. I don’t know if you can--that is, maybe you’ve got another engagement or something--but if you have time, and you want to stay, I could make you a cuppa.”

He stayed for tea and then for the rest of the afternoon, long after Petunia had flounced out in a huff to her “very important” party. He stayed for supper and helped Lily with the dishes afterward. And when he finally turned up on Peter’s doorstep, hours later than he’d said he would, his only excuse was that being Head Boy was a very time-consuming business.

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