Balanced

The most important thing James had learned in his life was never to annoy his father. He had only been in his father's study after having thrown a Quaffle through the window, which had messed up all his papers. He'd also only been three. His father had threatened James with as many curses as he could come up with while screaming at the top of his voice. James' father looked a lot like an angry rhinoceros when he was in that sort of mood, although thankfully, it didn't happen often as he was usually in control of his temper, like a proper Slytherin.

Severus Snape had lost it now; he was acting rather similar to James' father: standing over James threatening him with curses for bringing Peter and Remus into the common room.

'Are you crazy!?' he snapped, adding some extremely rude phrases and getting his spit all over James; a rather disgusting experience. 'Bringing those two in here! They'll know the way! They'll know the password! This is the Slytherin common room!' James considered his options. He could wait until Severus had finished and try to talk it over like calm, rational adults; he, Remus and Peter could run; or he could hex Severus. Once again, he found himself wishing he knew more curses.

'Quietus!' he hissed, pointing his wand and Severus promptly lost his voice, although he continued to mouth furiously. 'Thank you; now, Remus, Peter, I think it might be better if you leave. Do you think you can find your way out?' They nodded, doubtfully. 'Maybe not then. Michael, will you show these two to the Entrance Hall for me; I have to chat to Sev?' Michael shrugged; although slightly more intelligent than the average Slytherin thug, he was still happy with doing stupid simple tasks the others were too lazy to do, but only if they asked him nicely.

James turned to Severus who mouthed something horrible and scowled disgustedly at him.

'If you can't control your temper like a Slytherin, then I'm leaving that charm on,' he told him flatly. Severus rolled his eyes and gestured that he could control himself. James removed the charm.

The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his back, half way across the common room, after a brief and speedy flight through the air. He head hurt and he felt a bit dizzy, but apart from that he seemed OK.

'Ow,' he said, weakly, as he saw Severus standing over him. 'I'm too bloody trusting for my own good.' Sev smirked and hauled him to his feet.

'What on earth were you thinking, bringing them in here?'

'I got to see their common rooms, it's only fair,' said James.

'Since when do we care what's fair or not?'

'I care; sometimes it's nice to have friends, and sometimes you have to show you trust them.'

'Oh spare me the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff crap, I'm not in the mood. What are their common rooms like then?'

'You do not want to go in the Hufflepuff one. It hurts your eyes it's so yellow. The Ravenclaw's is OK. The two are almost exactly the same, apart from the colour scheme, really easy to find and with stupidly pathetic passwords.'

'Typical of them.'

The next few days passed rather quickly; James spent precious minutes of his holidays copying his essays from his text-books, except for Defence Against the Dark Arts. That he copied from a book that hadn't been on their set list, in the hope that Verdied wouldn't recognise it. He very much doubted that it would work, but everything was worth a try.

On Christmas morning, an amazing thing happened; James was truly surprised and shocked, and from the look on his face, Sev was too: Michael Lestrange remained in bed. Every other morning he woke up at least an hour before he had to, often waking the others up as well. James had woken up to a fairly modest heap of presents, although far more than what he usually got with Aunt Susan. He received a book on curses from Julian with the note:

I suppose you couldn't help being brought up by Muggles! Perhaps this will help a bit.

Julian

Julian had gone home for Christmas and James had neglected to send him anything. He supposed he could just tell him the post owls had all been too busy and give him something when he came back. Severus had found a book entitled: "Slytherins who went mad or bad"; James was unsure why anyone would write such utter crap, although he could tell it was a warning that if he trusted people too much, or acted too much like a Gryffindor, then things wouldn't work out, for the book was about Slytherins who did just that.

'Heartfelt gift, Sev,' he said, and Severus just smirked at him. Severus wasn't so pleased, however, when he opened a gift Sirius had sent him, which sprayed disgusting perfume all over his face. James bit his lip to stop himself laughing and glanced suspiciously at the present Sirius had sent him. The note said:

Enjoy, Oh Slytherin.

I hope your X-mas was as spiffing as mine. I sometimes wonder if I'd be as bad a parent as mine are, and dread to think. If I ever think of having children, stop me. They have been torturing me all X-mas! The really scary thing is: I shall look like a cross between the two of them in 20 years time. I shall stop writing now, for fear of throwing up.

S.B.

James held the box away from him as he tentatively opened it. He needn't have worried, it was only a box of Chocolate Frogs and a bag of Dungbombs. He opened the box, grabbed a couple, turned back to his presents and grabbed Remus', biting into a frog.

'Argh!' yelled Severus. 'He hexed yours too!' James grabbed a mirror.

He decided, on reflection, that emerald green suited him. He pulled out the frogs and searched around for another note from Sirius. On a crumpled bit of parchment, right at the bottom, it said:

I know how passionate you are about being a Slytherin (congrats to me for using a big word), so I decided to help you! I think you'll find you're green all over. For every frog you eat, it'll last about two days. Yes, I know it's unoriginal, you don't have to tell me, but it happens to be easy and quick. Just in case you're worried: the Dungbombs aren't actually hexed.

James decided the best way to approach this was with good humour, so he merely smiled and got back to his presents.

'Do you not care?' asked Severus, bewildered.

'Not really, it'll only last a couple of days. At least it's a Slytherin colour. Do you want one?' Severus just gave him a look and turned back to his presents. Remus and Peter had both got James sweets and tricks, which he had no objection to really.

Over breakfast, James noticed that everyone in the hall, except perhaps Dumbledore, looked incredibly worried by the colour of his skin. Remus and Peter, he noticed, had not received a similar gift from Sirius, as they still looked ordinary.

He waited for Remus and Peter in the Entrance Hall after he had finished, and, thankfully, they didn't take too long.

'Happy Christmas,' he said. 'Thanks for your presents. Did you get anything nice?'

'James, why exactly are you green all over?' asked Remus.

'It was a Christmas present from Sirius: Chocolate Frogs.'

'You ate something Sirius sent you! Are you mad?' asked Peter.

'As I don't know any spells that test food for hexes, I decided the best way to test it was to eat it. Didn't he send you hexed stuff?'

'Haven't tried it yet,' Remus said. 'Didn't want to risk it. You are too trusting, my friend.'

'Everyone says that, but I don't care; sometimes being as idiotic as a Hufflepuff is fun.'

'In case you're forgetting, James,' said Peter, annoyed, 'no Hufflepuff would be stupid enough to eat something Sirius Black sent them without testing it.'

'You shall pay for that one, Badger.' He sent some very threatening green sparks at Peter.

'No magic in the corridors, Potter!' yelled McGonagall, coming out of the Great Hall. 'Five points from Slytherin.' She didn't look at all bothered by the fact that his skin was bright green.

'But I'm not in the corridor,' whined James. 'I'm in the Entrance Hall.'

'Five more points from Slytherin for your cheek.' She walked off and James pulled a rude face at her back.

'Hope she got coal for Christmas,' he muttered darkly.

'Let's go outside and have a snowball fight,' suggested Remus.

Being green didn't really affect James' day much; he guessed that was precisely the opposite effect Sirius was after, but he didn't care. Remus and Peter found they had exactly the same stuff in their Frogs, but when they fed it to a couple of the school owls, they turned blue and yellow. James had a feeling that the owls would be avoiding chocolate for a long while after that.

'Of course,' said Remus, as they sat in the library after the huge Christmas dinner - which had been good even by Hogwarts standards. 'The easiest way to get him back would be to turn him red for a couple of days, but he'll probably be expecting something like that. He would expect us to do a similar thing to him, it's how a Gryffindor's mind works: they think we'll be fair about it.'

'But we can't do anything too much worse than what he did,' said Peter. 'We do need to maintain some sort of moral standards here, wouldn't want to slip down to the level of a Slytherin.'

'Why not?' asked James in a fake offended tone. They ignored him.

'Colour changing is just too easy,' said Peter. 'But we can't curse him and we don't want to do something so complex it could easily go wrong.'

'We ought to victimize all of Gryffindor house,' said James decisively. 'That would be fun.' He glanced at the other two. 'OK, OK, point taken, no blaming others for Sirius' mental illnesses. How about just the ones in his dormitory?'

'No,' said Remus. 'We need to do something as a one off on Sirius; we'll do a boring and rather unoriginal Gryffindor thing on them some other time. If you plan to do it soon though, I'm afraid I'll have to leave you as I'm visiting home again.'

'Well,' said Peter. 'You have been looking a little peaky, so, no doubt you and your mother will go and be ill together again.' Remus shot him a filthy look, but James had to admit that the comment was quite good coming from a Hufflepuff - maybe Peter was spending too much time in his company.

'We ought to leave revenge for a little while,' he said, thoughtfully. 'Because Sirius will be expecting our immediate retaliation, and then Remus will be here to help with it.'

'I suppose so,' agreed Peter and Remus nodded.

James had a look at the book of curses Julian had sent him that evening; he hadn't told either Remus or Peter, as he doubted they'd be pleased that he was learning them. They were fairly basic ones, James could tell, even with the little knowledge of curses he had. He had seen the older Slytherins practising far worse than what he had in the book; still, it would be useful.

The last week of the holidays was spent mostly having snowball fights, although Remus and Peter still had to get some of their work done. Secretly, James practised some of the curses, but they were very energy draining, even the easy ones, and he didn't have anyone to test them on properly. The green colouring did only last two days, and although James had been tempted to have another frog to make it last longer he saved them for future use. Remus went off to see his mother again, after getting a bit ill first; it seemed to be a definite pattern. However, as always, he was quick to return and to heal again.

Sirius, and all the other students, arrived back the day before the start of term.

'Hello, Oh Slytherin,' he said when he saw James waiting on the marble steps in the Entrance Hall. 'You had fun then? Did you like my present?'

'Loved it, Sirius. You missed out on a lot though, I got to see the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw common rooms, and Sev got into a bad mood over me inviting them to the Slytherin one.' Sirius scowled jealously.

'I had to be amazingly happy and joyful and full of Yuletide cheer,' said Sirius disgustedly. 'My mother and father had some of their friends round in the end, so it wasn't a family Christmas. They all did the "My, haven't you grown?" and "Are you enjoying Hogwarts then?" routine and all I could do was grin and bear it. I told my mother I would rather sit through eternal torture than another 'family' Christmas when I could be at Hogwarts and she told me to grow up and stop being such a spoiled brat.'

'Sounds fun,' remarked James.

'I'm staying here next year,' said Sirius. 'Can I copy your homework, mate? I didn't get any of mine done.'

Going back to school, after what had seemed like a very long holiday but had gone by entirely too quickly, was difficult. James had to adapt, once again, to receiving homework every evening and getting precious few hours of sleep. Worse still, the teachers were pointing out that exams would soon be upon them, although the exams were in the third term and they still had ages to go. On the bright side, the summer holidays looked much closer this side of Christmas.

In Defence Against the Dark Arts, Verdied had yelled at him for his essay, copied out of the book, and given both him and Sirius detention.

'If you're both going to copy out of a book,' he told them, while supervising them cleaning his classroom, 'then at least be smart enough to copy different passages. Just because you're in different classes, doesn't mean I don't notice identical essays.' Fortunately, he, McGonagall and Brauhum were the only teachers who noticed that their work was exactly the same.

The next lesson, he announced they were starting the topic of werewolves.

'But Professor,' said Natasha Fields, another girl in their class. 'Werewolves aren't in this year's text book.'

'Are you the teacher, or am I?' he asked, annoyed. 'There might come a day when you need to defend yourselves against them, and it might be sooner than you think. I would have taught you this last term but you all needed some knowledge of the basics. Does anyone here know anything about werewolves? Potter, you can answer this one, and you can sit up straight too!' James sat up slightly.

'Werewolves are usually humans, but every full moon they turn into ferocious wolves who eat any human they can find. There are wizarding laws against them doing certain things so they're not a danger to others. They're not supposed to attend school, thank Merlin.'

'So that's your opinion of them, eh? That they shouldn't be allowed?' James thought for a second; was this a trick question?

'Yes, that's what I think, they're as bad as murderers.' James could see that the others in the class seemed to agree, although Verdied was smirking in a very Slytherin-ish way, as though amused by James' answer.

'What you have neglected to mention, Potter, and I'm sure you knew this, is that they do not act like this because they want to. A murderer kills out of choice, a werewolf kills because they can do nothing else. Lestrange, could you tell me how you could tell the difference between a werewolf and a real wolf?'

'Er... a werewolf will come at you and try to kill you but a wolf will probably run away.'

'Not quite was I what looking for,' said Verdied. 'Care to elaborate, Miss Knightshade?'

'I think werewolves are bigger than ordinary wolves,' she said uncertainly.

'True, true. Miss Wilkes? Do you have something to say?' Marian was scornful as she spoke.

'The killing of werewolves has been outlawed by the Ministry because they're supposedly "people" too. My uncle was killed by a werewolf and we couldn't get proper justice because of the Ministry's ruling that he couldn't help himself.'

'Well, he couldn't,' Verdied told her bluntly. Marian looked genuinely upset by this.

'Surely he should have to do something though?' asked James, bemused by this. 'If the werewolf killed, he should be punished for accidental murder. Surely it's worth some time in Azkaban.' The others nodded in agreement and James really felt like part of the group. However, by the end of the lesson James had noticed something odd: Verdied seemed to be amused by his comments, although he wasn't by anyone else's.

'You may find that not everyone in the school shares these views,' he told them at the end of the lesson. 'See what some others think, we'll continue this discussion next time and get on to defending yourself.'

They spent most of dinner talking about this and a few of the older students joined in, offering methods of mass producing and using Wolfsbane, which was one of the few ways werewolves could be killed.

'You were getting along awfully well with the rest of the evil serpents, James,' remarked Sirius after dinner. 'Don't think I didn't see you.'

'See what? I was talking to them!'

'What was so interesting that it had about half of the table involved? The odds that Slytherin will lose the Quidditch cup?' asked Remus and James hit him.

'We were actually talking about today's Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson.'

'Fascinating,' remarked Remus sarcastically.

'We've started doing werewolves,' added James. 'We didn't do much defence today, but we were talking about the Ministry rules regarding them.'

'Are you okay, Remus?' asked Sirius, concerned. Remus had gone white and stopped in his tracks.

'Yeah, I'm fine, I've just remembered some homework I've got. But I suppose it can wait. How on earth was one lesson interesting enough to merit all of your dinner discussion and put other topics on hold, like world domination for example?'

'We don't need to discuss our plans for world domination,' said James. 'We already have them sorted. Marian said her uncle was killed by a werewolf.' Sirius grimaced slightly.

'Poor girl,' he said. 'Not that I care, her being a Slytherin and all.'

'The Ministry can be pretty lax about werewolves though, can't it?' said James.

'What sort of rules does it have?' asked Peter, displaying his Muggle-ness once again. Strange really, James had never noticed how little about the wizarding world Peter actually knew before he'd come to Hogwarts.

'They're not allowed to get many jobs, but most employers won't let them work and there are fines if they try and lie about it. They also have to go away from any populated areas when they transform: there are some unplottable islands that adults can apparate to for the full moons,' said Sirius.

'Yeah,' said James. 'But don't forget they can't be arrested for murder if they kill, they're not even fined, or put in prison or anything. They just get away with it. Verdied kept going on about how they can't help it really, but they're still killers. They tear humans apart, unless they bite them and turn them into werewolves.'

'How terrible!' said Peter. 'That poor girl, whatever her name is, in your class.' James hardly noticed how quiet Remus had been, and how white he still was.