Harry Potter Histories: Lily Evans and the Wolfsbane Secret

Chapter Four - An Incomplete Rehabilitation

The train doors burst open and a flood of boys and girls in wizarding robes stepped out and began milling out onto the platform. Had there always been so many? And had the first-years always been this short?

"Look, I found a pint-sized wizard! I wonder if I can take him home with me," James joked as they walked off the train together. Truth be told, Lily was glad he was back to his old joking self. Their moment on the train had been somewhat uncomfortable, and they had ridden in silence the rest of the way to Hogwarts. Her emotions were caught up in a confused swirl as they descended.

"Hey, you! I saw that dungbomb!" James pulled the offending object out of the hand of a third-year with thick eyebrows and a nasty glower.

"Firs' years! Firs' years!"

Lily caught a glimpse of Hagrid when she turned her head towards that familiar voice. Looming like a giant over the small students who were tentatively approaching him, his beard--if possible--even more disheveled than last year, Hagrid wore a broad smile and a thick set of furs from who knew what creatures.

"Miss Evans! Good ta see yer back at the ol' Hogwarts! And I see they made yeh Head Girl. Couldn'a picked better meself."

She smiled up at him. "Take good care of the kids, Hagrid."

She turned back and found James swirling around the middle of a crowd of students, pointing two fair-haired girls towards the lake.

"C'mon, sis!" one of them shouted excitedly.

"You ever notice how rare twin wizards are?" James mused as she approached.

"Are they?"

"Well you don't see many, do you?"

Long lines of bobbing lanterns lit the way, following the gradual movements of their bearers towards the carriages that would take the rest of the students to the school.

"I'll see you there," James said, disappearing into an opened cabin. She was treated to a flash of Sirius Black's perpetual grin and Remus Lupin's rather tired half-smile before the door shut.

Lily walked a few steps forward before hearing her name called.

"Hey, Lily! C'mon, we saved you a seat!"

Stepping into the carriage, she found herself next to Gwyn and across from Alice and Alyssa Bagnold, a seventh-year Ravenclaw.

"Glad it isn't raining like last year, it ruined my hair," Gwyn was saying.

"Oh, get off of it. You just used a dry and decurl spell once we got inside."

Gwyn pouted. "Still. And besides, I didn't know that spell the year before."

Lily laughed, glad once again to be among friends. Alice's love life was apparently the initial topic of choice, since Gwyn had managed to wheedle the news about Frank Longbottom out of her on the train ride.

"He's handsome enough, I suppose, and he's the right amount taller than you--"

Alice immediately demanded, "The right amount for what?" But the comment only caused Gwyn to sigh.

"Nothing, dear."

Alice sat back, a somewhat dissatisfied expression on her face. "Besides, I'm surprised you think height is such a big deal, I saw you snogging Edgar Hollis last year--"

Apparently she'd touched a sore spot, because Gwyn's face flamed red and Alyssa started laughing.

"To be fair, it's not even a question of him being so short, it's really more your fault."

"I can't hold it against you, though, "Alice was saying. "I suppose the supply of men who would be the right height above you would be small indeed, no?"

It was true. Gwyn's most distinguishing characteristic was her height. She stood taller than most boys in their class, probably a good hand taller than James. Lily was annoyed to find that he was the first comparison to pop into her head.

Gwyn said, "Well, the way I see it, it has to be the right distance difference. I suppose it can be one way, or the other."

"In Alice's case, if it went the other way she would be kissing goblins," Lily joked. Alice was the shortest of their group, a hair under five-two.

"Did you hear about the owl problem at school?" Lily asked suddenly. She wanted to know what other people had heard about it.

"Yeah, I heard someone hexed them all. Powerful bit of magic, to hex a hundred owls or more--"

"No, it can't have been," Gwyn interjected. "Because owls that arrive at Hogwarts don't want to leave either."

"So it's a hex on the room--"

"It can't be a hex at all, those tend to wear out, don't they? It's something else."

"We heard there might be something in the woods," Alice said. Gwyn and Alyssa both focused their attention on her.

"In the woods?"

"Some--some animal, some kind of creature that makes the owls afraid to leave. Afraid to even fly over the woods."

"That doesn't sound right, have we ever heard of anything that can do that?"

"No," Lily admitted. "But it's not like we ever read through the whole Magical Creatures and Their Various Magics, did we?"

Gwyn and Alyssa shook their heads, but Alice only looked down.

"Who'd you hear this from anyway?" Gwyn asked.

"Sirius Black."

She threw her hands up in the air. "There's your answer then, he was just spouting off rubbish like he always does--"

"You fell for it easily enough last year, though, when you were in the tea shop during Easter week--"

"That was diff--!"

Laughter erupted from the carriage as the trio began to review Gwyn's various conquests over past years.

"And there was Hornvarger, Prount, Visby...don't forget Baddock from Slytherin, or that Sawbridge--"

"I did not with Baddock, I swear--"

Lily loved no time more than the time she spent with her friends. At moments like this she often felt as if nothing bad was happening in the outside world, as if the terrible rumors of Lord Voldemort were nothing less than a tale told to frighten children, as if she would wake up tomorrow and it would all have been less than a dream.

With them she felt safe, and for those precious minutes nothing in the world could assail them.

Unfortunately, the other three girls finally seemed to realize that they had exhausted the possible topics in their own lives but hadn't yet discussed any of Lily's prospects.

"So, Miss Evans, I hear a certain someone is Head Girl..."

"...and a certain someone is Head Boy," Alyssa finished Gwyn's sentence.

"And what's this about him visiting you over the summer?" Alice asked, before Lily could cut her off.

"He what?"

Lily said, "There's nothing there, get off of it. You know I don't like him." Unfortunately she couldn't put as much conviction into the last sentiment as she normally had, confused as she was about the James she had encountered over the summer and again on the train.

"So. There was this group of first-years milling around and one of them happened to ask me whether Head Boy and Head Girl were married. You know, like a king and a queen of Hogwarts." Alyssa chuckled.

"Of course," Gwyn went on, "I told them that wasn't how it was at all."

"But then she said, 'Although with this year you might not be far off,'" Alice said.

"Oh God," Lily said.

"Listen, it's about time we really had an honest answer out of you. Look, no matter what you say you can't deny what you've done. You've refused to go out with other boys--"

"Even perfectly fine-looking ones," Alyssa added.

"Homer Skively was a fourth-year!" Lily hissed.

"Well, yes. But he was tall for his age."

"Oh God," she said again.

"And even though you yell at him when other people are watching, he keeps pursuing you, you must be encouraging him somehow--"

"It's because of that stupid Quidditch game. Being a Chaser has addled his brains, he only thinks about running after things."

"Speaking of another point of evidence," Gwyn barreled on. "Your eyes follow him at every Quidditch match--"

"Do not!" she shouted.

"I've paid attention," Gwyn declared soundly, as if that was all the proof she needed.

"It's okay, there's nothing wrong with liking Quidditch players--" Just at that moment, the door banged open. Lily realized the carriages had stopped, and shuffled across her seat. Not watching where she was going, she stepped out and almost ran into--

Standing right in front of their carriage was none other than James Potter. Behind him, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were arrayed in a half-circle.

"Woah now," he said. He held out a hand, which Lily refused to take as she got out.

"Ladies," he continued, with a small bow of the head. Alice, Alyssa, and Gwyn all took his hand on the way out, although with Gwyn's height she couldn't have needed to step down.

"I think you'd better come with us, Evans."

"Why?" She peered suspiciously at his expression. A bit of the old rogue's grin was settling into his eyes.

"Well, let's just say--um--look, I meant what I said on the train, but let's just say insofar as I've changed, it's been an...incomplete rehabilitation."

"What did you do, Potter," she growled angrily.

"I'm trying to be a better person," he went on. "But I still like to have my fun..."

Alyssa, Alice, and Gwyn were moving off with the rest of the students towards the castle, but James started going off in the opposite direction, the other three boys following closely behind.

"We're supposed to go that way," she pointed out.

"Just follow me. We just need someone to help carry the blankets--"

"What did you do?"

"It's harmless, really, and all Sirius's idea besides--"

Lily groaned as she was dragged along to the waterfront. Already she could see the first-years' boats coming up across the lake. The glint of their lanterns ran tracks across the rippling water, like guidelines tugging them to shore.

"Tell--me--what--you--did."

"Just some invisible holes in the bottoms of the boats--" Sirius explained.

"You call sinking the entire first-year class a harmless prank?!"

"I swear they won't sink, I put a Bernoulli Charm on the holes so the water will only come in just fast enough to give them a good scare--"

James seemed quite pleased with himself, and Lupin only had a sort of exasperated expression. She couldn't believe it. There was no hint of the person she had spoken to on the train. This was most definitely the same old insufferable James Potter she remembered.

"This is unbelievable!" she exclaimed. She turned to Lupin.

"And you let this happen! You, a Prefect!"

"I couldn't find a rule that forbade sinking the boats, you know. And I really looked through the rule book front and back."

"He paid more attention the back way, really," Sirius laughed. Peter chuckled sycophantically behind him.

"Remus is right, of course," he said. "I looked in the book as well, couldn't find a thing."

"Yes, Wormtail, with his masterful knowledge of the rules," Sirius mused.

"I'd think it would be you," James said.

"Me?" Sirius sounded astonished.

"Got to know them to break them, Padfoot."

When they reached the shore Lily inspected the surroundings and noticed that they had lined up several boxes full of blankets behind some odd formations of stones.

"What are those--"

Before the question was fully out of her mouth, Sirius turned around and touched his wand to the first grouping. "Lumos Silica!" The oddly smooth, black rocks suddenly blossomed with a fiery light in the shape of a W.

"Well, come on," he said with a hint of irritation. "I'm not going to do all these myself, start at the other end."

Lily watched as the four of them quickly moved out over the formation. Peter walked all the way to the end and muttered the incantation, lighting up an S that glowed softly some five meters away.

"Well, Evans, give us a hand," James said.

"I'm not going to help with one of your adolescent pranks, Potter." By this point James had lit the HOG and Lily realized what they were spelling. Finally they finished and she heard Sirius grunt in outrage.

"Welcome to Hogarts? What happened to the W there?"

"I'm sorry, Sirius, it just won't light up completely." Peter muttered the spell again and tapped the stone. The light rose from the tip of his wand and extended down as far as the bridge, but then faded away.

Sirius hurriedly fixed the letter himself and then said, "Alright, then. And now we wait."

They didn't have to stand there very long. Lily was grateful for that, as the wind that blew out over the lake could suddenly turn cold at night. As the boats truly came into sight, she saw that the students in every boat were frantically paddling with their bare hands, drawing the boats in closer to the shore.

Hagrid, meanwhile, was bellowing, "No need ter panic, now! Just slow an' steady'll do it, slow an' steady!" She could see the lamplight reflecting not only on the water around the boats now, but on the rather alarming amount of water in the boats. Most students were soaked up to the middle of their calves.

"Look, a welcomin' party!" Hagrid called out. Sirius guffawed at that one, while she walked out towards the shallows and started pulling in boats.

"Thanks for that bit o' help," Hagrid said as they beached. "I wasn' sure we'd make it."

She glared daggers back at James.

"No, they would have without us, I swear. The Charm was just right," he said.

"So it were you four who done it, eh? I oughta guessed."

"Ah, Hagrid, no need to be grumpy. You didn't get too wet, did you?" Instead of answering, Hagrid pulled a boot off and upended it over James's head. The rush of saltwater that soaked through his hair and pushed it down over his eyes made him gasp.

Sirius, Remus, and Peter were gasping as well, although with laughter, and even Lily had to admit it was pretty funny to see James standing there with a strand of seaweed clinging to his temple.

"I guess--" he finally said, "I deserved that one."

"Righ' you are. Now c'mon, kids."

Sirius beckoned over at the blankets and the first-years ran towards the boxes shivering.

"Welcome to Hogwarts!" his voice boomed out over the placid waters.

"Finest place in the world," James said wearily, brushing the damp strands of hair out of his eyes and wiping his glasses on the part of his sleeve that remained dry.