The Epic Tale of the Hogwarts Food-fight

Chapter Three

Well, Lily is back again, anonymous reader. It is the 19th of February, Thursday, as McGonagall has so helpfully reminded me I must write. I am once again sitting in detention, facing my Professor and sitting beside the mop-headed horror, both of which happen to be at the top of my list of deranged and hopeless cases.

So, something funny happened yesterday. I was ticking the names off the list of crazy people I have made for myself to Rich while we sat in the common room and he pointed out the irony of my writing such a list. I admit I did not quite understand what he meant. Honestly, I have every right to vent my frustration concerning the outrageous injustice of my being surrounded by nutcases, but what right did he have to snort at me?

I am now thoroughly bored and annoyed with the way Potter is tapping his fingers on the table. I feel like telling the twit to get a life, but I doubt Professor McGonagall would applaud me if I did. So, instead, I guess I'll just go back to writing about my little misdemeanour which the staff have dubbed a felony seemingly just for the hell of it...

So, the 14th of February, Saturday, Valentine's Day, the day of the one and only Hogwarts food-fight. The day I came dangerously close to murdering James Potter, at 5:45 I was still searching the halls for Peter Pettigrew, in the hopes that I could threaten him into revealing the reasons for the marauder's involvement in the whole 'secret admirer' affair. If such reasons existed, that is. After all, he was the only one of those boys who I doubted found much glory in the expression 'guard it with your life'.

Well, the sneaky little rat certainly did know how to make himself scarce; I had to give him credit for that. I had already checked everywhere I could think of: the common room, (where I had also gone up to my dorm quickly to put away the flower, since I did not want it dropped and found again), the boy's dormitory, the grounds, the Great Hall, the bathrooms, the kitchens...where could he be? I'd even gone to the Hospital Wing to check on Terry, since my search was turning out to be a wild-goose chase. He was well and ready to leave, but Madame Pomfrey said not until around dinnertime. So I was alone on Valentine's Day.

"I feel so bad about all of this," he'd said grumpily to me. "We had plans for today and now..." He gestured sombrely at the Hospital Wing.

"It wasn't your fault!" I comforted with. "It was the slimy git's."

"Who's?" He looked confused.

"Potter's!" I declared, looking at him like he had gravy for brains.

"Oh." He seemed to consider this for a while. "Are you sure? 'Cause if it was I'll...do something about it."

I smiled, very pleased.

"So will I."

Afterwards I decided to search one last time. Sometime after I'd been up to the Divination tower I vaguely realized I was facing a portrait of trolls in frilly pink things that did not look so attractive; there was nothing else in the hallway. Stomping my feet with impatience and aggravation, I turned to leave but then heard a noise and turned around. None other than Peter Pettigrew was clambering out through a door I had not yet noticed, holding numerous pastries in his hands.

He started when he saw me and promptly dropped a muffin.

"Oh, whizzes," was all he said as I watched him drop down to pick up the muffin, his arms still overflowing full. As he reached his arm for it, about half a dozen other little cakes fell as well.

"Mauling mandrakes!" he exclaimed.

I quickly stomped over and picked up the first muffin that fell and stood there looking over him. He did not appear to have noticed my standing over him as he was too busy mumbling about how the icing on the top of his muffin had been smudged when I made him drop it, until he grabbed a cake right next to my foot, and, looking up to see to whom the leg attached to it belonged, gasped.

I dangled the muffin before him.

"Hello Peter."

" Um, greetings Lily," he stammered.

I said, "Do you happen to know anything about what you were doing at the Quidditch pitch this morning?"

He looked both horrified and as if he wanted to laugh.

"Um, no..."

"And what about a certain flower I received yesterday?" I inquired smartly.

"Um, no..."

"Ah...so you have heard of it...how'd Sirius know it was mine?"

His eyes shifted and he gibbered, "Um...who?"

I frowned and ordered, "Don't play thick," I said, while it crossed my mind that he did not need to be a very good actor to play that part. "How'd he know?"

"Know what?"

At this point, I was already very much for just hexing him and getting it over with. I pulled out my wand as means of persuasion. There comes a time in any given situation where measures must become desperate in order to reap results.

He squealed and, for some unexplainable reason, put his hands over his cheeks as if to protect them. The boy is odd, I tell you.

"Peter..." I said menacingly, "Do you know who sent me that lily?"

He looked as if he were going through an internal struggle for a while. Then finally, he seemed decided. All in one breath he pretty much shouted something that was muffled by his hands still placed firmly over his cheeks.

"Iff' uff'' 'Amef oo' 'femp iff' oo' du."

Oh, well, how intelligible.

"Speak, Pettigrew." I moved my wand closer to his face.

His eyes bulged and his hands left his cheeks so he could shout, "It-was-James-who-sent-it-to-you!"

Well, that was quite a strange thing for him to say so I inquired further, "What do you mean by that?"

He explained, "It...was...James...who...sent...the...flower...to...you."

It was James who...sent me that poem...and the flower? James Potter is my secret admirer? This little bit of information made me stare at Peter as if he'd suddenly grown an extra head.

"What?"

Pettigrew looked frightened and hastened to say, "James...he sent that poem with the flower to you, because he didn't want to see you with Terry Caldwell on Valentine's Day."

Even if I'd overlooked the preposterousness of James Potter having done something romantic for me, that would still not make any sense. Why would the poem stop him from seeing me with Terry?

"If you don't explain..." I jabbed my wand at him, desperate for more information.

He gasped and proceeded to stutter, "Well...James l-likes you and he d-didn't want to see Caldwell k-kiss you or any-anything and so he had an id-dea. So he ch-charmed a flower against y-your boy-f-friend. He made it so that every t-time Terry came near the flower something w-would hap-p-pen and if you had the f-flower with you he'd never be able to come near you. Remember the time he got attacked by owls? And when he fell through the s-stairs? And the Bludger? We d-didn't send it, it was the charm, we were just watching. And we saw that you dropped the flower on the p-pitch so James asked Sirius to g-give it back to you so Terry would still not be around."

This sank in very slowly...so they had charmed that flower? James Potter hated my boyfriend that much? He was that desperate? What a low, foul, treacherous...though, I hated to admit, very clever...and just plain evil thing to do! Oh, he would pay. He would pay! If I had thought he deserved to have his head shaved, now I was very much of the opinion he deserved to be castrated.

And, anonymous hypothetical reader, do you want to know the worst part? I had loved that poem, I'd felt special and overvalued by it. I dreamed about it; that one day my secret admirer revealed himself to me and he would say all sorts of sappy love lines to me that would make me giggle and swoon. In those dreams there was no Terry, there was no one else, we were floating through golden paradise and my admirer looked like one of the princes from little girls fairy tales. To find out that the one I had really been daydreaming about was James Potter was shocking beyond words. The dream was shattered like shards of broken glass. I don't like to remember that feeling, like I'd been set up and made out as a fool. I'll never admit this again, but I was hurt.

And I hid that hurt very well in anger. I was furious. And now I feel like getting rid of that whole confession, but McGonagall says we cannot cross out anything we write in these. Curses.

"L-lily...? Are you all right?" Peter had asked tentatively. I must have looked very frightening. I could not remember ever being angrier in my life.

I smiled poisonously at him and he backed away toward the wall, all of his pastries long since forgotten.

"Never been better," I said in a voice that would have sounded good in a horror film. And I stormed away, with every intention of finding Potter and depriving him of the ability to reproduce.

"Lily, where are you going?" asked Peter in a high-pitched voice as he scampered after me.

"Where's James?"

"Where are you going?"

"Where's James?"

He faltered a few steps.

"I...don't know."

"Doesn't matter, I'll find him myself." I rolled my eyes and my body seethed in anger as I made my way down toward the Great Hall.

Once Peter realized where I was going he tried everything he could to convince me that James was most likely in the common room and that he would be glad to help me find him. Ha! No one fools the great and raging Lily Evans, especially when she's on the hunt. But he did not give up and that is how our odd little un-concurring band made it down to the Great Hall: me surely looking very much the lunatic and Peter rattling off stories about how James had indigestion and could not attend dinner.

My mind was set; I did not care for the consequences of my actions at this moment, I was being controlled by some higher power that told me, 'kill him, kill him!'. Revenge is always so much sweeter before it is actually done.

Finally, I got there, and what I saw made my stomach drop as I screamed in outrage.

My, my, my...I hate to admit it, but this detention seemed oddly short. Potter has already packed and left. He stared at me the whole time, and did not once cease from tapping his fingers. How on earth could McGonagall just sit there with that stupid little smile on her face? Oh, how maddening...I'm probably going to dream about shrinks, flying food and infuriating tap dancers wearing frilly pink some things. That's just how wonderful my life is.

Lily Evans