Framboise et Coquelicot

"Your attention, please!"

Dumbledore´s magically enhanced voiced boomed through the Great Hall and all conversations were promptly interrupted.

The Headmaster was standing on the platform where the Head Table usually was and he looked quite imposing in his robes of deep purple with a tall matching hat on his head. His keen blue eyes swept over the students and he smiled.

The whole school was assembled in front of him on this fine Sunday morning. The House tables had been pushed against the walls and hundreds of chairs had been brought, or rather conjured up, instead. The platform on which Dumbledore was standing was reasonably high and those seated in the back only had to crane their necks a little bit to see his face. Lily, who was seated near the front, did not need to crane her neck at all; she could even see all the teachers standing against the wall behind the Headmaster. As she scanned their familiar figures, she noticed one, clad in sober black robes, she did not know at all. The new teacher, she thought.

"I know that the announcement I made the other day greatly disturbed some of you," Dumbledore said, his voice not as loud as before but still easily heard by everyone. "But I can assure you that what is going to happen this year is not as terrible as you think. I will let someone else more expert on the matter than I am explain everything to you. Will you please welcome Professor Raven, who has kindly agreed to join us at Hogwarts to teach you the art of Duelling!"

Dumbledore turned towards the teachers and the stranger came to join him. The Headmaster placed a comforting hand on the younger man´s shoulder while the students, recovered from their shock, were applauding politely, looking at the unexpected new teacher with curiosity. When they had quieted, Dumbledore left the professor standing alone at the edge of the platform and retreated to the wall with the other teachers.

Professor Raven was a tall, dark haired man, and Lily thought he must have been in his twenties, though you could never be sure with wizards. She couldn´t make out the colour of his eyes from where she was, and it bothered her. You could tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes. Anyone could read emotions in a person´s eyes, but Lily was an expert: she had a gift for it, and if she concentrated hard enough, she could see the soul of that person just by looking into their eyes. She almost never used that gift to its full power though, it left her weak and trembling, and she couldn´t even do a simple spell like Reparo for almost a day. She contented herself with `reading´ eyes with more success than other people had. Any strong willed person could, of course, mask their thoughts if they so wished, but it rarely occurred to them that she could read them through their eyes. The gift came from her grandmother, who probably had a few magical cells in her body, albeit not enough to be introduced into the magical world.

Lily was very eager to look into Professor Raven´s

It was basically a retelling of what she had told her friends the day before, except that it was a bit more detailed and done in a much more enthusiastic fashion. Lily couldn´t blame her fellow students for listening so rapturously. The man had a very agreeable voice, smooth and regular, and he knew how to use it to charm his audience. Even Marian, who was seated on her left, seemed quite pleased with this new addition to the Hogwarts´ staff. Lily had to acknowledge that he looked quite dashing in his well-cut robes, pacing along the platform in long strides.

A shocked murmur rippled through the throng of students when he announced that all houses would have classes at the same time. But it was quickly replaced with excited chatter when the Competition was mentioned.

The professor let the students carry on for little while before raising his hand and asking for silence. Like Dumbledore, he had an aura of authority and power about him, and he was obeyed at once.

"There is just one more topic to cover, and then you shall be free to enjoy the rest of your Sunday however you wish," he said, smiling in what could have been a paternal way if he hadn´t looked so young. "Duelling can get a bit out of hand when you are experimenting with new charms and spells and we do not wish for anybody to get injured."

The First years squirmed uneasily on their chairs at these words. Some of the older students didn´t look very much at ease either.

"That is why you will be provided with special uniforms for the class. They will be specially charmed to prevent any serious damage being done, and they will be designed to allow you great liberty of movement."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over his future charges. When he spoke again his voice was deeper and he looked very solemn.

"Now, I don´t wish for any of you to have to duel any Dark wizard when you are out of this school´s protective walls. But it could happen. You won´t have the uniforms to protect you, and you will have no guarantee your opponent intends to play fair with you. Always keep that in mind, always

The Great Hall was so silent after that little speech that you could have heard the fluttering of fairy wings. The warning was meant to be taken seriously, and it had been taken very seriously. Satisfied, Professor Raven

"Madam Malkin will be coming to Hogwarts tomorrow with her assistants, and each year will go and have their measurements taken at different times throughout the day. You will find a timetable on the notice board in your Common Rooms. Your new uniforms should be ready by the end of the week. Well, I think everything has been said. I wish you all a pleasant Sunday, and I will see you in class soon."

The students started filing out of the Great Hall as the teachers left by a side door talking in low voices amongst themselves. Lily and Marian waited until the Hall was almost empty before leaving their seats. They had no wish to be trampled by students eager to go outside and enjoy the rest of their afternoon.

As the two friends were starting up the main staircase, Marian asked Lily what she thought of their new professor.

"Can´t tell yet," she answered. "What did you think of him?"

"Well, he is certainly going to make the year much more interesting." Marian grinned. "I´m glad they chose someone like him and not like, say, Professor Flitwick."

"I heard that Professor Flitwick was a great dueller in his time though," Lily replied. "And look at it this way: the older the wizard, the more experience he´s likely to have. Take Dumbledore for example: he is one of the greatest wizards alive. I bet he would have taught us himself if he wasn´t so occupied with his Headmaster´s duties."

Marian rolled her eyes. "Lily, Lily, Lily," she sighed. "What am I going to do with you? You´re really hopeless."

Lily frowned, she couldn´t see what was wrong with her argument.

"You missed my point completely," Marian went on. "I don´t doubt that Flitwick and Dumbledore are powerful wizards. I just meant that it will be nice to have a young and attractive professor of the male variety teaching us for once. We haven´t been very lucky in that department until now."

"You sound like a lovesick second-year! And what about Wentworth? Already forgotten him?"

"I do not sound like a lovesick second-year, thank you very much," Marian said sulkily. "And who said I had any designs on Gregory anyway?"

Lily just raised an eyebrow and Marian knew she wasn´t fooling her. "Alright, I might have entertained some pleasing fantasies about Gregory," she conceded. "But it doesn´t mean I can´t look around and use my eyes. Boys do that all the time; they call it `completely detached and objective appreciation´, it doesn´t mean anything."

"Right." Lily tried not to smile.

Marian looked at Lily through narrowed eyes, as if sensing some scepticism on her friend´s part. "Right," she insisted to prove her point. "And what are you doing walking to Gryffindor Tower with me? I thought you said at breakfast that you needed to go to the library after the assembly?"

Lily stopped abruptly and realised that, she was indeed heading for the Tower and had missed the staircase that would have taken her to the library. Marian smirked when she saw the surprised expression on Lily´s face.

"See you later!" she said airily, walking away quickly.

Lily watched her friend disappear around a corner and shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips. Marian was the queen of swift escapes, and Lily sometimes wished she possessed that skill; it would have got her out of some past tricky situations she was prone to getting herself into. She often wondered what she would do without Marian; she was like the sister she couldn´t find in Petunia. Her friend´s words about what she had felt while looking up on duelling two days ago came back to her, but she pushed them back firmly to some deeply-buried recess of her mind. She never was a real optimistic in the first place and she didn´t need another thing to blacken the board even more.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Library was nearly deserted when Lily stepped in. The librarian, Madam Effingham, was nowhere in sight, and a mound of dusty old books was littering her desk.

Lily sighed in frustration. She needed advice on the best books available for her Transfiguration essay and she had intended to ask Madam Effingham. The old witch knew the library like the back of her hand and would have gladly helped her.

She spotted a pair of giggling Gryffindor girls seated in a relatively secluded corner. She recognised them at once and started to walk up to them. As she approached their table she could see they were looking through a big black book and she could catch their not-too-discreet conversation.

"Don´t you think we should be looking through the 1901-1950 volume?"

"Of course not Amalia! He can´t be that old and - oh! Isn´t that him? It certainly looks like him!"

Amalia cocked her head to the side and looked at the picture her friend was pointing out. "Honestly, can´t you read Julia? It says `Robert MacDonald´ and not `Robert Raven´. Besides, I don´t think Robert would suit him as a first name."

Lily had reached them by now, but the girls didn´t notice her and continued poring through their book.

"Well, perhaps he didn´t attend Hogwarts... We´re at the year 1972 now, it´s too recent." Julia sighed as she turned another page.

Well, I suppose you´re right, he might not have attended Hogwarts," Amalia acknowledged. "We´ll look at the 1901-1950 volume just in case, and if we still can´t find him, I´ll owl my cousin Florence who´s at Beauxbatons. She´ll do some research and tell us if he went to school

"Alright." Julia closed Hogwarts´ Leavers: 1951-____ "Let´s try to find a book on Love Potions too, we´ve wanted to find one for a while now."

The two friends got a nasty surprise when they stood up and found themselves facing a stern-looking Lily Evans.

Lily shook her head and tutted. "Julia and Amalia, how many times do I have to tell you that the Library is here to do serious research and not to host your little conversations?"

Amalia´s glance shifted to Lily´s shiny prefect badge, pinned in plain view on the Sixth year´s robes. She swallowed nervously, feeling very small all of a sudden. She always felt small when confronted with someone older than she was, especially if that someone happened to be wearing that little red badge.

Lily took pity on the two third-years; she was quite fond of them. "Just go and put that book back where you found it and go and enjoy the rest of the day outside if you don´t have any homework to finish," she said gently but firmly.

Julia and Amalia looked greatly relieved. They turned around and were about to hurry towards the `Hogwarts: past, present and future´ section when Lily´s voice stopped them.

"Girls?"

They looked back at Lily with trepidation.

"There is no need to do a detour through the Potions section once you´ve put that book back. Love Potions are illegal and you won´t find anything on them here."

The two girls looked at each other briefly and shifted on their feet uneasily, unsure about how to respond.

"Don´t worry," Lily smiled. "I was thirteen not so long ago and I searched the Potions section through and through with my friend for the same information. I just thought I´d save you the trouble." She winked at them.

Julia´s eyes brightened and she looked as if she was about to ask something, but Lily had no intention of continuing the subject. She didn´t want to encourage them too much, and it would absolutely not do if she told them that she, a prefect, had sneaked into the Restricted Section with Marian, thanks to James´s `borrowed´ Invisibility Cloak, and now knew quite a bit on those famous

"Do you know where Madam Effingham is by any chance?" she asked, remembering why she had come up to the girls in the first place.

"She left some time ago and asked Julian Trevenik to watch the Library while she was gone," Julia answered, disappointed by the change of subject.

Lily glanced briefly at the seventh-year Slytherin prefect working alone at the other end of the room. "Alright then, thank you girls."

"You´re welcome, Lily!" they chorused, grinning like maniacs, happy to get away with no punishment and hardly any sermon.

Lily watched them go and decided she would look through the entire Transfiguration section herself since she didn´t know when Madam Effingham would be back.

Twenty minutes later, she came out of the maze-like arrangement of the Library´s shelves with five books she had trouble keeping in her arms. Still no sign of Madam Effingham, she noticed with frustration. She knew she would have to wait until the librarian came back to check out her books. She dropped her burden on a nearby table and plopped

down into a chair. She selected `The Worst That Could Happen To You Or The People In Your Vicinity When Attempting Transfiguration´ from her small pile of books and opened it to the first page.

She had only read a couple of paragraphs when a tall black haired boy slid into the seat next to her.

"Fancy meeting my darling Poppy in the Library," he said, his brown eyes twinkling.

"If it isn´t Sirius Black! I think it´s the first time I´ve seen you here. To what do we owe this great honour?" Lily teased.

"It´s the first time you´ve seen me. But you don´t monitor the place day and night my dear, far from it. I´ve been here plenty of times," Sirius countered, flashing his best smile.

"I don´t doubt it," Lily responded with a smile of her own. She liked those little talks with Sirius: she couldn´t remember discussing anything serious with him in all the time she´d known him. She knew it was only an act he could drop whenever he wished, but it hadn´t happened with her, and she was glad. "What do you have there?" she asked, noticing the rather worn book he had placed on the table.

"Research material."

Lily leaned forward and looked at the book cover. Everything You Want To Know About Levitation And Other Useful Spells, it read.

"I see," she said, a disapproving scowl on her face. "We covered Levitation charms in first year, Sirius."

Sirius´ smile widened, if that was possible. "Ah, but I need it for, shall we say, the improvement of my mind."

"I hope we won´t see anything flying around in Gryffindor Tower."

"Don´t worry, I´ll practice far away from the Tower." He grinned like a Cheshire cat. "Probably somewhere near the dungeons."

Lily leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms on her chest. "All right, out with it, Sirius. Snape or- his excuse for a sidekick- Avery this time?"

"Why trouble ourselves with difficult choices? We´ll include all the sixth-year Slytherin boys, no favouritism."

"How generous of you," Lily said sarcastically. "Don´t forget we need to win the House Cup this year. We´ve lost it to Slytherin the past two years. You don´t want to lose any points."

"We´ll make it discreet and inventive. James doesn´t want to lose his prefect badge, it gives him some advantages he is rather fond of."

Lily snickered. "You don´t have to be genius to guess what those `advantages´ are. All the male prefects are fond of them." Thoughts of girls sneaked into the Prefect bathroom or taken to the Astronomy Tower after hours swam into her mind. These thoughts annoyed her greatly.

Sirius shook his head, as if he could read her mind and disagree with her. "You´d be surprised if you really knew why he likes being a prefect so much."

He sounded serious when he said that, and Lily´s curiosity was piqued. "Feel free to enlighten me. I´m all ears," she said.

Sirius just shrugged and reverted back to his normal self. "Sorry, I´m sworn to secrecy." He smiled mischievously.

The little git

"Well, it´s not as if I cared anyway," she said indifferently, turning back to her book.

In truth, she cared a great deal about everything that concerned the four Gryffindor boys. There was a great deal of mystery around them, and she was dying to know all their secrets. She was too considerate to try and search their minds, and besides, they knew all her tricks already. Of the four, James was the most puzzling. At times he was so closed up she doubted that even her grandma could have figured him out. But he could also display an incredible array of naked emotions through those blue eyes of his. Those eyes were all she could see at the moment; it was as if they were printed on the page she was reading. She closed her own emerald eyes tightly, and when she opened them again, words written in black ink were staring back at her. She was not sure that the eye obsession she had was a very healthy one. Raven´s, now James´...

Lily caught a movement from the corner of her eye and turned her head to see Sirius rummaging through the books she had collected.

"Transfiguration, eh? You wouldn´t be working on that last and particularly nasty essay McGonagall gave us by any chance?"

"And what if I am?" Lily asked a bit suspiciously.

"Well, you won´t find much in those," he said, indicating the small stack of books. "I borrowed a great one with useful information last week. I´m finished with my essay and I don´t need it anymore. I can give it to you it you want."

"That´s really nice of you, Sirius," Lily said, a little surprised. "Thank you."

"That´s what friends are for."

The Library´s doors opened before Lily could reply, and Madam Effingham came in, a big box in her arms, which she dumped on her already disordered desk. Lily gathered her books and got up, but Sirius stayed seated.

"Aren´t you coming?" she asked him.

"Nah. It would look too suspicious if I took that book out. It helped generations of troublemakers, you know. Heard of it from my dad. I´d be better off studying it in secret and taking notes before putting it back discreetly on its shelf."

"I´ll see you later then," Lily said before walking away towards Madam Effingham. As she stopped in front of the desk, she could see the librarian was slightly flushed as she tried to organise the old books into neat piles. She looked up when Lily cleared her throat.

"Oh, it´s you, Lily dear," she said. "I´m sorry I didn´t see you, I was just sorting out these books. Professor Raven

Poor Professor Raven

She was soon free to go and headed for the door. She turned back to look at Sirius before leaving. He was scribbling furiously on a sheet of parchment that must have passed most of the week in the pocket of his robes, judging from its crumpled appearance. He was actually writing with a Muggle pen, much easier to carry around than a quill and inkbottle.

As if sensing her gaze, he glanced up from his notes and gave her a conspiratorial wink.

She winked back and left the library, closing the door as noiselessly as she could. She really shouldn´t encourage the boys in their harassing of the Slytherins, she reprimanded herself as she walked back to Gryffindor Tower.

Lily didn´t listen to that voice often but she made an exception this time. Severus Snape had still not paid for the Mudblood insult he had thrown at her on the first day back. Well, a punch in the nose from James wasn´t exactly nothing,

But then again, the Muggle-born verbal harassment was threatening to get out of hand in the near future. Pranks would do no good against that. Lily could very well see the situation degenerating if restraining measures were not taken. But the issue had been oddly absent from every prefect meeting she had attended since she had received her badge a year ago. While everyone else was in denial, Lily couldn´t ignore it any more, but she would need strong back-up if she wanted to bring it up

It seemed she had so much to do all of a sudden that she unconsciously picked up her pace, blowing an annoying strand of hair from her face. She was so lost in her thoughts that it took her more than a few seconds to realise she had bumped into something and was now sitting rather ungraciously on the cold stone floor, her books in a messy heap at her feet.

She stared dumbly at the hand that had suddenly appeared in front of her. It was a very nice hand, she thought, studying the long fingers, the clean and short nails. Definitely masculine. It exuded strength and power, and she could see the tensing and relaxing of the tendons as the fingers flexed slightly.

If you could judge people by their hands, you would be very careful around the person who was extending that hand. You wouldn´t want to be on their wrong side.

Lily gulped and let her gaze travel up the equally strong wrist, up the strange wizarding watch with all its funny symbols, up the black-clad arm, up to the shoulders, the neck and finally the face: the lips finely chiselled, the straight nose, the eyes...

They were the strangest pair of eyes Lily had ever seen. For one, she could read absolutely nothing in them, which was a rare enough occurrence for her to be instantly interested. For another, she had never seen eyes that colour before. The irises were of the palest green sprinkled with bits of a darker green, but the most extraordinary thing was that they were rimmed with purple. The way purple merged with green was fascinating and hypnotising. Lily realised immediately she had found someone much stronger than her in the psychic arts and quickly averted her eyes to prevent him from discovering too much in them.

The whole thing couldn´t have lasted for more than a few seconds. Lily took the hand offered to her and got to her feet. The man was about the same height as James and had the same black hair, but it was cut slightly shorter.

"I´m very sorry, Professor Raven," she blurted out. "I wasn´t watching where I was going." And you will probably think I´m an absolute idiot who can´t even cast a Wingardium Leviosa, she added mentally.

The professor smiled, though it seemed a bit forced. Lily cringed inwardly; she had really done it this time. Here was one of those tricky - not to mention embarrassing - situations she wished she could run from as easily as Marian. "You don´t have to apologise, I wasn´t watching where I was going either," he said in a voice that, surprisingly, didn´t sound at all like the one he had used in the Great Hall. It was strained, like his smile.

Clearly, he wanted to get away from her annoying presence as soon as possible. Well, now was the time to experiment with Marian´s method. She bent and quickly picked up her books from the floor, aware of the professor´s eye on her the whole time. Her wayward strand of hair had managed to fall back in front of her right eye in the process but she didn´t care. She gave her brightest smile, said something about looking forward to her Duelling class, and left as quick as she could without actually running.

.