Balanced

James forgot about seeing the look of inspiration on Sirius' face after their first Potions lesson. He had other things on his mind, so his friend's stupid ideas didn't seem that important. They had far more homework than anyone could have expected, and although James found most of the individual pieces of work fairly easy and quick to do, it still seemed to take him forever.

The Hogwarts castle was absolutely huge and James was thankful for his good sense of direction, especially during the first week when nobody knew where to go, except him.

He and Sirius were exploring the castle when they ran into Peeves, the Poltergeist. While he had been mentioned and described by various older students, warning the first years to stay away, he was still a bit of a shock. It seemed strange for a creature so transparent to be able to hold perfectly solid objects, let alone throw them across a classroom to hit someone on the head.

Despite being warned away from him, James and Sirius struck up polite conversation with the crazy-looking spirit. They found out that they had a lot in common with him. Remus and Peter had been in the library after refusing to copy a Transfiguration essay directly out of one of the books, so had not met him on that occasion.

James discovered what Sirius had thought up doing during the next Potions lesson, when he took out a large, fake, gooey eyeball and stuck it to his forehead. He then continued working as though nothing was different.

It attracted a bit of attention from the other students, who kept turning back to see it. James moved his cauldron as far away from Sirius as he could and got back to making his potion, relying on whistling "Happy Birthday" to take his mind off Sirius.

'Mr Black, forgive my bluntness,' said Brauhum, 'But why do you have an eyeball stuck to your forehead?'

'That's my eye for Potions, Professor,' said Sirius, innocently.

'And has it helped?' muttered James.

'Nope, but it looks interesting, you have to admit.'

Defence Against the Dark Arts was one of the most horrific experiences James had ever known; true, the classroom was perfectly normal, if a little boring, with plain wooden desks, a couple of windows, and plain stone walls. But the teacher, Professor Verdied, was something else altogether. He was completely bald and James could have sworn he polished his head. He had large glasses, one lens tinted orange and the other turquoise. His robes, however, were usually black, or brown, with lavish gold and silver trimming. Had he been a pleasant person, then they could have ignored this strange appearance, but he was a monster. He never spoke, only shouted and demanded better than the best from every student.

James received extra homework from him on a regular basis, because he thought James should be doing better than what he handed in. Sirius got similar treatment and, as neither of them liked to work, they found it incredibly annoying. What was even more annoying was Peter and Remus standing around gloating at the fact that they didn't have any extra.

Severus Snape didn't seem able to get over the Dungbomb on the first day. James had insisted that they ignore him for a while. Sirius had been most disgusted, especially since Severus didn't seem to share the same ideas and was rude to them.

'Come on, James! We have to do something to him. The ugliness just pleads to be hit by a Dungbomb.'

'It's OK for you to say,' James had told him. 'I have to live with him! At least you can escape into your common room. We've hit him with a Dungbomb, we wait for a little while now, there are plenty of other people we can torture.'

'But he keeps on insulting us and Peter!'

'Insult him back, and stop sounding like such a whiny baby.'

'Stop sounding like such a Slytherin. We Gryffindors defend our friends to the death.'

'With Dungbombs!? We Slytherins do things properly.'

'Are you saying a Dungbomb isn't a proper way of revenge?' James rolled his eyes and stuck his nose in the air in a very Slytherin-ish way. Thankfully, he managed to persuade them to leave Severus alone for a while, concentrating instead on the many other students at Hogwarts, who would walk around all day with signs stuck to their backs; or not be able to open a door, no matter how nicely they asked. The most common was, of course, the Dungbomb: they received ten detentions each one day when they organized a race in the corridors. The race had four different courses, each marked by Dungbombs positioned one metre apart, and they had to try and set off as many as possible on their particular course. It had taken a long time to set it all up, but it had been worth it as most of the castle stank for three hours despite the attempts of the teachers to get rid of the smell, as between them they had managed to get almost everywhere.

At the end of September Remus seemed to get very ill; he was pale and tired, and he coughed a lot. It came about rather quickly too. Sirius fed him several doses of Pepper-up potion that day, which Remus only accepted on the promise that it wasn't brewed by Sirius. James was careful not to catch anything from Remus; whatever it was, it looked bad. He missed the afternoon's lessons, but he wasn't in the Hospital Wing.

'Professor,' Peter went to McGonagall. 'Do you know where Remus is? He was ill, but he isn't in the Hospital Wing.' McGonagall glanced down at the three of them as they waited for an answer.

'He had to visit his mother, she's ill,' she said, after a long pause.

There had been something wrong with the look on her face and the pause, James decided, but he didn't share his suspicions with the others yet though, as they probably wouldn't believe him.

Remus returned the next afternoon, still looking ill and more tired, but less peaky.

'So, how was she?' asked James.

'What?'

'Your mother.'

'Oh, fine, fine, never better,' he said, hurriedly.

'Then why did McGonagall say she was ill?'

'She was - but she got a lot better.'

Remus seemed to dramatically improve over the next couple of days.

October passed almost uneventfully, except for the fact that Remus got ill again, and was quarantined by Madam Pomfrey: she wouldn't let the boys in the hospital wing to see him. Fortunately, he was soon well again, but he couldn't tell the other three anything about what had been wrong with him, except that it had been painful.

The Hallowe'en feast was spectacular, but James' father had told him that he should expect nothing less. There were pumpkins everywhere, and cobwebs, with large glowing spiders eating struggling fluorescent flies. Whenever you opened the door into the Great Hall, a large skeleton dropped down in front of your face yelling 'Bwahahaha!' and grabbed at your robes. It had made James jump out of his skin, then he eyed it coldly and pushed past it, shooting sparks at its fingers when it tried to pull his cloak. The food had been ... interesting. What James had eaten had tasted nice, although most of it had looked either too disgusting or too alive, wriggling and slimy to touch

Perhaps the best part of the feast though, was when a large blue and yellow striped owl delivered what looked like a whole pint of shampoo to Severus. He hadn't been pleased. The owl had looked a little disgruntled to be dyed such stupid-looking colours, too. Poor owl.

Severus had given James a filthy glare, although it hadn't been him.

Dumbledore had stood up towards the end.

'I'd like to thank the Prefects who, this year, organised the decorations and the menu. It meant less work for us, the hard-working and dedicated staff.' He clapped politely and the school and the teachers joined in. Peeves and the skeleton by the door, who had been having a talk about something, clapped very loudly. Dumbledore yelled over the noise. 'Now, off you go to bed.'

James met up with Sirius, Remus and Peter in the Entrance Hall.

'Was that owl from you, Sirius?'

'No, most unfortunately.'

'Severus blamed me,' he glanced suspiciously at Remus and Peter, who had just eyed each other as if they knew something. 'Did you two have something to do with this?'

'Why else would an owl appear with the colours of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff?' asked Remus. 'Besides, you need a brain to think up something like that, which you and Sirius are severely lacking in.'

'Woe is me,' said Sirius. 'Now I'll never be able to do that. It's been done and will be unoriginal.'

'Since when did something being unoriginal stop anyone?' Peter wanted to know. 'I bet that one will be used again and again and again.'

'And since when are Dungbombs original?' Remus wanted to know. Sirius gave a world-weary sigh, as though resigning himself to the fact that he couldn't make these mere mortals understand - a feeling James was used to.

Severus ignored James the next day, and none of the others in his house believed that it wasn't him. Strangely enough, none of them found it funny either. James had no problem with being ignored; he spent the whole day humming or whistling 'Happy Birthday' to himself whenever they were near enough to hear, until Severus finally cracked and sent what seemed to be a rather unpleasant hex in his direction. James wasn't sure if he'd rather be in Defence Against the Dark Arts, where the rest of his class were, or in the Hospital Wing, having the giant lemon meringue pie on his shoulders turned back into a head.

Sirius had pretended to have a stomach ache so he could watch this in the hospital wing. Of course, James was the one laughing when Madam Pomfrey forced some horrible-looking potion down Sirius' throat and told him to go straight back to lessons. Apparently, the trauma of having your head turned into some sort of pie was enough to merit an afternoon's stay in the hospital wing.

Sirius returned half an hour later; the potion he had drunk had really made him sick and he had to have another dose.

'It's designed to stop people from pretending they're ill,' Madam Pomfrey told Sirius in an amused voice after he'd had a second drink, to get rid of the ill effects of the first. 'You won't be trying that again in a hurry. Go and clean your robes.' Sirius took as long as he could to clean the vomit from the front of his robes: he didn't want to go back to lessons for the second time.

*

'That's quite a nasty curse,' said Peter. The three of them had come back after their lessons had finished, although Sirius had flinched at the sight of Madam Pomfrey when she'd given him an evil look.

'Where on earth did you find out about it?' asked James.

'Just a book, it was from the library, loads of curses. It has the effects of a switching spell, but is very difficult to reverse. Only professionally trained Counter-Cursers from the Ministry should even attempt to do the counter curse. It was developed in the late 1950s when an angry witch's husband criticized her cooking and she promptly cursed him. No one is completely sure how it works as the victim can still see, talk, hear and think, at least for the first five minutes. After that the victim will start to feel pain; but it has never been tested beyond five and a half minutes.'

'It would have been funnier if I'd been the one doing it,' said Sirius.

'Yes, but you can't do it, can you?' said Remus, reasonably. 'None of us can.'

'That one is illegal,' said Peter. 'Snape will get in serious trouble.'

'No he won't,' said James, easily. 'I doubt Madam Pomfrey has any idea what it was, or she wouldn't have got rid of it - she'd have left it to the Ministry. She probably won't even tell anyone, and neither will I, and neither will you.'

'WHAT!?' demanded Sirius. 'Are you crazy!? You could get him into real trouble.'

'Exactly. He won't tell on us when we do something, if we don't tell on him. The Slytherin house has a bad enough reputation anyway, something like this won't help, and it was only a little curse, nothing major.'

'Nothing major! James! It's illegal, almost everything classed as a curse is, even if all it does is turn your head into a meringue.'

'Sirius, you and I are very different when it comes to our ideas of major and minor curses. I've seen worse. If you tell, I shall deny it.' Sirius looked surprised, if a little hurt, but he didn't yell when he next spoke.

'I never knew you could be such a Slytherin, mate,' he said. 'But if this means our ceasefire is up then I suppose I won't mention anything.' James grinned and nodded, but he really had no idea what Sirius meant: he wasn't that much of a Slytherin, was he?

James and the others spent the next few days torturing Snape, the Slytherin way. In Defence Against the Dark Arts, James asked Verdied about that particular type of curse - he was rewarded by a worried look from Severus and Verdied telling him to shut up and get on with his work. Sirius asked about the effects of switching spell curses in Transfiguration, McGonagall also told him to get on with his work, but not before she said that very little was known about that type of curse. Peter, while talking to Flitwick about Levitating objects, somehow managed to swing the conversation around to charms that affected your head - possibly ones to do with fruit pies. James marveled at Remus' talk on growing lemons and how they were used for magical purposes in their Herbology lesson. Severus was getting more and more worried during each of these mentions.

Severus finally confronted James in the Slytherin common room and told him to just tell someone and get it over with.

'Sev, don't you have any Slytherin pride?' said James, repeating the question so often put to him. 'I would never tell on a fellow Slytherin for something like that. Just make sure, if I, or Sirius, Remus or Peter, make a silly mistake involving curses, that you return this favour. Where did you learn that curse, by the way?'

'A fifth year taught it to me, he's a family friend.' James nodded and got back to his homework, whistling quietly. Severus did spend quite a bit of time with the older students; Julian and Michael were fairly good friends, often leaving James by himself. He had Sirius, Remus and Peter, but he would have liked to be better friends with those in his own house. Marian would occasionally talk to him but she too agreed on his lack of Slytherin pride and there were four other girls in the year for her to be friends with. It was lonely sometimes, but James had got used to it at Muggle school.

Remus got ill again at the end of November.

'What on earth is the problem, Remus?' asked James, making sure he didn't stand too close.

'It won't be Remus Lupin - girl magnet, it's more like: Remus Lupin - disease magnet,' said Peter, looking up from a Transfiguration text book. The four of them were sitting in the library which was one of the few places that they were allowed to mix with other houses. Remus smiled weakly at Peter's suggestion.

'I'm fine, I just get ill quite often. I'm visiting my mum again tomorrow.'

'Random,' said Sirius. 'Why go when you're ill and during term time?'

'Oh, and I wouldn't want to miss any lessons, would I?' said Remus, sarcastically. 'That would be such a great pity, I'd practically die of sorrow. She's having a relapse from a couple of months ago, it could be serious.'

'We'll make sure you get your homework when you come back,' said Sirius, charitably.

'Nice to know I've got such wonderful friends, who care so much for my education that they don't want me to fall behind,' said Remus, in a disgusted voice. He then started to cough and looked like he was choking.

'Remus, when you try to be witty, or insulting, it's best to keep it dignified,' said James. 'Don't choke when you're done.' Remus shot him a filthy look; being ill definitely didn't help his temper.

'Are you OK, Remus?' asked a girl who had walked up behind them. She was short and thin with large eyes which made her look innocent and in need of protection. She was quite pretty, he supposed, but James had the feeling she wasn't as innocent as she looked, perhaps because she looked far too innocent.

'Yeah, I'm OK,' said Remus, glancing at her. 'See you in the common room.' The girl recognised the hint for her to leave and headed out of the library. James racked his brain to remember her name, but he couldn't.

'Who's your girlfriend?' he asked.

'Not my girlfriend, she's Rebecca Buckland.'

'How do you know her?' asked Sirius.

'Sirius, she's in my house. I see her in the common room, I'm sure even you could name all the Gryffindors in our year.'

'Er, possibly.' The depressing fact, thought James, as he listened to Sirius trying to name all the Gryffindors, was that he hardly knew half of them.

~*~

A/N:

I'm not very happy with this chapter, it took several months and several tries for me to get my act together and complete it - it just didn't work right for me.

Thanks to everyone that's helped/reviewed and another reminder that this is indeed an AU. Don't tell me in your reviews (hint hint) that I've got a certain canon detail wrong.

The curse was an idea from my sister, it was, originally just going to be a hex, but it developed into an illegal and possibly dangerous curse.