Year One: The Mauraders and the Forbidden Forest

Chapter 4: Encounters with Slytherin

It took a week or two for the first years to cope up with the schedule. Sirius had finally stopped complaining about homework, and he even apologized to Lily for accidentally burning one of her parchments. Lily had been infuriated and wouldn't speak to the young boy until he had apologized, which he refused to do until James egged him to appease the red-head.

"Fine," the red head had told Sirius that day, "I forgive you. Now, if you please, I'd rather get back to my studying than dawdling about here."

James shrugged the homework off. Instead, he was amusing himself with his Snitch, letting it go and catching it after a few minutes. He even went so far as to release it in the library, and Professor Kismet (who was going through a shelf of books when suddenly she was hit in the face with a winged ball) had swooped down on him and confiscated the golden object. If the librarian hadn't intervened, the professor would never have given back James' snitch.

Melanie and Lily were usually found drowning in a tower of books at the library. Occasionally Remus would join them on some days. However, he was most often found in the company of James Potter and the reluctant Sirius Black. It seemed Remus enjoyed the fact that Sirius and James didn't make fun of him for his paleness and ruggedness. That in itself was something the young boy treasured most.

Now if ever there was a Hogwarts "Congeniality" Award for First Years, the award would most probably go to Peter Pettigrew and Sarah Morran. Most of their time was spent on befriending and taking part in inter-house relations. While some recoiled from their overfriendliness, others welcomed it and accepted them as honorary members of their house. However, there was one particular group that took pleasure in shunning others and sticking to the pack. It was when Sarah decided to approach them that the Gryffindor first year knew of the existence of Lucius Malfoy.

It was Saturday, and Sarah had suggested to Peter that they should head on over to the Slytherin table and strike up a conversation. Peter, knowledgeable about the Wizarding World, looked at her as if she was a patient in St. Mungo's Insanity ward. He knew some of the older people in the Slytherin table, and he definitely did not want a part of any of their discussion. "Are you crazy? Everybody knows the Slytherins love nobody but themselves!"

"Come on, it can't be that bad," Sarah said brightly, "There has to be at least one friendly Slytherin."

"Oh yeah? Name me one."

"How should I know?"

"See? This is madness, I tell you."

"Don't be ridiculous, Peter." The blonde frowned at him. "You won't really know unless you've actually met them, right? Come on!"

And so, much to Peter's chagrin, he was being pulled towards the Slytherin table, Sarah taking the lead. A few students were gathered about, huddled together and laughing at something at the middle of the table. The Great Hall wasn't filled with many people that time of day, most were out to Hogsmeade or just roaming the castle courtyards. So, it wouldn't be surprising if trouble was to start. Sirius stooped over to James and Remus as he watched Sarah and Peter get closer to the huddled mass of green robes. "Get ready for a brawl. Your friend is about to start one with Slytherin."

"Sarah only wants to make acquaintances," Remus interjected. "I don't see how that would cause her much trouble."

James shook his head, "Well, mate, you don't know Slytherin all that well. There's this tradition we have with them. We hate them, vice versa."

The pale boy argued back, "Yeah, but some traditions can't always be followed. Surely at least one Slytherin student hasn't gone bad."

"Perhaps," Sirius muttered uneasily. The talk of Slytherin house made him uncomfortable, and the two dropped their conversation. Instead, they watched with fascination at the event that would happen once Sarah reached the table.

One of the older students, most probably the ringleader of the group, saw the incoming blonde and looked at her with disgust. James bristled at the Slytherin's reaction. One thing he hated seeing was hostility against his friends, and Sarah was a dear friend.

Peter developed a nervous twitch as Sarah calmly sat down and attempted to start a conversation. The older student continued to frown at her, but the girl was not looking at him. In fact, she had glanced at each of the students in the group, and she realized that they were all glaring menacingly at her. That didn't put her out, however. Sarah cracked a forced smile and introduced herself along with her companion.

The ringleader didn't answer at first, then finally gave them an amused smirk. "I suppose now you want us to warm up to you and allow you to be a part of us, eh?"

"Er...no, we're not--"

"Perhaps you couldn't tell that we were in the middle of something important?" the older student continued on, sneering at the first years, "Didn't your parents teach you not to nose about into something?"

"We weren't nosing about--"

"Then why on earth would you want to get into this conversation, hmm?"

"We were just--"

Sarah tried to mumble answers back, but the Slytherin questioning her was enjoying himself by intimidating the poor girl. "Well, if your stupid parents didn't teach you any manners, maybe you'd like it if my two friends here would? Crabbe, Goyle, go teach these kids not to interrupt on our conversations."

Two chunky students beside him cracked their knuckles and chuckled. Peter, who was sitting silently behind Sarah, broke into a sweat and quickly backed away, pulling his friend's sleeve. Sarah frowned and recovered from her initial surprise of hostility. "Okay, I can see we're not wanted. Don't bother with the manners, I believe I've learned enough to keep myself from cursing you, thank you very much."

"Oh, but we insist," the student replied, his smile turning into a frown. He didn't like being insulted back, not one bit. The two he called "Crabbe" and "Goyle" approached closer until they made a circle around Sarah, who firmly stood her ground. Peter had already run back to the safety of the Gryffindor table. James, at this point infuriated that his friend was treated horribly, had sprung off his seat, stalking towards where Sarah was encircled. Sirius held him back, hissing that defending her was not the right decision. They were only first years after all.

The two Slytherins moved ever more closely towards Sarah, pounding their fists with pleasure. It was not going to be a pretty sight.

"Oy! Lucius! I better not be witnessing another of your antics!" a voice cried out from Sarah's right. "You mangy git, tell your minions to back off the girl, now!"

The Slytherin glared at the blue-robed speaker. "What makes you my boss, Jon? If I do recall, I'm as much of an equal as you."

Jon, the one who had commanded the Slytherin to stop, gave Lucius a frosty smile, "On the contrary, I'm a year your senior, Lucius, and I've got more respect as a prefect that way. So I suggest you stop this now, or there will be consequences," he was pointing at the Slytherin hourglass.

Lucius signaled for his two cronies to desist in their advance. "You're lucky she's not worth my time. Come on, everyone, best finish our conversation in our common room, where we aren't interrupted by nosy Gryffindors."

The raven-haired boy in blue robes continued to smile at the Slytherin ringleader until his train disappeared into another room. On their absence from the Great Hall, he looked back at Sarah with a more serious tone. "Mind you, don't get too near Lucius Malfoy. He tends to be very hostile to people not in his house."

"I can see that," Sarah was shaking her head, and smiled at the older boy, "but thank you for your help."

The prefect nodded and escorted her back to her table, the gentleman he was. James was still fuming, but Sirius had forced him down before he did anything rash against Lucius and his group. Sirius noticed the prefect badge embroidered with the Ravenclaw crest on the boy's robes. He frowned. The prefect looked familiar...and he didn't know why.

Remus smiled at the prefect. "Thank you er..."

"Jonathan," the young man said, "Jonathan Belle. I believe you know my sister."

"Aha!" Sirius cried out to practically nobody, "I knew it!"

Blue eyes stared at Sirius curiously, "Knew what?"

"Ah...eh...nothing," he muttered back, turning a light shade of red.

Jon shrugged and turned when he heard his name being called from his table. "I'll be right there!" He gave the first years another handsome smile and apologized for him leaving them. "I best be running off now, guys. Just remember not to get into too much trouble."

Peter was glaring at Sarah the whole time. "See? What did I try to tell you?!"

"Hey, at least we know we tried," Sarah said stubbornly, "It didn't hurt to give your best shot at being friendly."

"Ha! You were on the verge of getting hurt!"

Green eyes were glaring at Peter, "Well, I recall you not bothering to back me up when I was in dire need of it!"

Remus interrupted the altercation by stating something positive. "Jonathan didn't seem like a bad guy, and neither is Melanie. You could tell they're siblings."

"Well, at least he had the decency to call us guys instead of kids," was Sirius' reply.

"Who had the decency?" a blue eyed girl asked when she heard Sirius murmur.

Melanie and Lily were standing behind the assemblage of first years, piles of books in their hands. The red head sighed and dumped the books next to Sirius, who looked on with amazement. "Um...Lily, what on earth are you doing, exactly?"

She stared at him, irritated, "What else? Work!"

"But...aren't you going a bit too overboard?" Sirius was incredulous.

Lily's friend smiled, "It's nice to be able to start work as early as possible, with as much information on the subject as you can get."

Sarah looked at them as skeptically as the others did, "You guys have gone off your rocker, did you know that?"

They heard James chuckle. His brown eyes gleamed with amusement. "I've never seen anyone so dedicated to schoolwork!"

"You haven't seen them all, mister," Lily retorted.

"Well, that's true."

Peter waved his hand, "Please change the subject, this talk of homework is giving me a headache."

Sirius was still puzzled as to why on earth the two girls were intent on doing so much work for their classes. He had spoken his opinion to the boys as they climbed to their dorm room. "What's the point of relaxing in the weekends then? It's fun to take a break from work especially when you just got off of a week of class. Then, after you've procrastinated, you rush to do your homework at the last minute. And then, after that, you relax again. It's a whole circular process of relaxing and procrastinating. I mean, I'd rather do as little amount of work as possible to achieve the grade I want, wouldn't you?"

James was touched. "That...was beautiful. Sirius, I think you and I will develop a wonderful friendship together..."

"And I think Remus and I should leave you two to plan your wedding," Peter suggested.

Remus heard Sirius yelling at Peter with disgust, but could not make out the words. He glanced out a window near the entrance of their dorm room and stared at the moon, mesmerized by it. The young Gryffindor didn't hear James calling out to him, he had other things on his mind. James had to pat the pale boy on the back to get his attention. "Remus. Are you okay?"

"Ah...yes, sorry, I was a bit preoccupied," Remus answered.

Peter nudged him, "What? Don't tell me you were thinking on doing work, too?"

The boy chuckled, "No, there's no point in that, I've managed to finish it all this afternoon. Some of the subjects here are pretty interesting, so I couldn't help getting all my work done beforehand."

Sirius trailed behind. He was watching Remus' gaze and looked up at the moon as well. The boy glimpsed the moon in the last day before its full beauty will shine tomorrow night. He wondered what held Remus' thoughts toward it, but shrugged it off, preferring to keep his nose clean through such matters.

James waved his arm to Sirius. "Are you coming up or what?"

"Yeah, yeah!" Sirius told them and hurriedly went to his friends.

***

Relations with the Slytherins worsened after Sarah's daring nerve to stand up to them. Two days after the small incident, people already knew of the first year who went up to Lucius Malfoy. The situation worsened when the Gryffindors came in for their double potions class with Slytherin on Tuesday.

James was carefully cutting up his millipede in sections for the Allergy potion they were assigned to make. It wasn't a very nice experience for Lily, who didn't want to think about the poor creature at all. She got even more uncomfortable when Professor Dunbar instructed them to dump their ingredients into their boiling pewter cauldrons. Lily watched sadly as her ingredients floated about the cauldron, simmering and turning into a light shade of purple. Peter leaned in next to her. "What's wrong, Lily?"

"The poor millipede, it never had the chance..."

Sirius snorted and accidentally cut apart his pollen shrooms. "Argh...kripes, look what you did! Egh...why are you mourning for a useless insect anyway?"

Sarah was giggling, amused. There they go again, bickering like a brother and sister would. After her meeting with Slytherin, Sarah was careful not to get too close to their side of the room. She was a bit uncomfortable when their potions class had double periods with the Slytherins. The thing Sarah did notice was that the Gryffindors took one side of the room while the other house took the other. There was a split in the middle, and those Gryffindors and Slytherins sitting there were at the opposite ends of the table.

"Hey, Sarah," Samuel, a Gryffindor student, whispered, "There's a guy staring at you from over there. Why is he doing that?"

A Slytherin student was frowning at Sarah, who turned and noticed him. She recognized the student to be Snape, the one who had gone into her compartment to tell her friends about arriving into Hogwarts. The blonde tilted her head and tried to find out why Snape was glaring at her so. It was very unnerving to have someone stare at you especially when you can feel their gaze.

Before she could think of a solution to keep her staring "friend" from continuing with what he was doing, a loud "BAM!" exploded into the air behind her. The Slytherins were snickering uncontrollably. Professor Dunbar waved his wand and cleared the greenish-purple smoke to find young Sirius Black on the floor, holding a broken flask in his hands. Sirius was frowning, "Dang shrooms...I knew I should have cut them evenly..."

Professor Dunbar had his hands on his chest as he glowered at the poor young student. "What is the meaning of this, Mr. Black?"

Again, the Slytherin kids snickered, which causes James and Sirius to glare in their direction. Melanie bent over and examined the flask, a thoughtful expression on her face. Lily wondered as well about the incident, but she couldn't put a finger on it. Suddenly, Sirius began to sneeze. It was a loud, grating sneeze that continued on a few more times. Before they knew it, the people near the explosion also started wheezing, drivel coming out of their noses. It was an allergic frenzy which resulted in the chortling of laughter from the Slytherin students. It seems out of the rest of the group, the furthest away managed to stay safe. Among them were Melanie, Sarah, and James, who were unaffected.

The whole lesson was disrupted, as the professor had no choice but to force everyone to clean up the mess. Some of the Slytherins continued to snigger under their breaths, unable to control themselves when a sneeze retched into the air.

***

"I can't believe he gave me a detention!" Sirius exclaimed after a few wheezing sneezes. "It was all... (ACHOO!) Lily's fault!"

Lily glared at him and sneezed. "Look here, you should have been paying attention...ack!"

James was beyond himself. He wanted to laugh at them, but then he distinctly remembered that he had been given a detention as well. This was what he got for trying to dissuade Professor Dunbar from giving Sirius one. "But professor, it was an accident, he really didn't mean to be so careless..."

"Mr. Potter, if you would please, I would like your friend to pay the consequences of being careless in my class," was Professor Dunbar's icy reply.

"But professor..."

"Potter! Black! Detention!"

James winced at that bit of memory.

"If you ask me," Peter said after blowing his nose, "I think the Slytherin students had something to do with this."

"I think you're right, Peter," Melanie said quietly, "That flask was made so that it couldn't hold in an allergy potion. Sirius, do you remember who put it on the table before we began with our experiments?"

Sirius thought for a second and opened his mouth for another sneeze. "Well...at least we know my allergy potion works. I don't recall anyone putting it on my table...I grabbed it from the shelf near the Slytherin side. That's where all our flasks came fro..."

A slight dawning of understanding came to him like a bolt of lightning when he remembered that there were students who slightly giggled when Sirius reached for the flask. Was it planted earlier by one of them?

Brown eyes behind round spectacles lit up. "Yeah...could someone have tampered with the flask?"

"Why, that..." Sirius began, but was stopped by another attack of continuous sneezes. "Argh! I give up! Doesn't anybody know a spell to stop this?"

"If I did, don't you think I'd have gone out of this mess by now?" retorted Lily, breathing heavily. "I think the allergy only lasts for a few hours or so. We're just... (ACHOO!) going to have... (ACHOO!) to wait it out."

Sirius and Peter groaned. Sarah giggled and turned to say something, when a thought struck her. "Hey, have you seen Remus?"

"That's odd..." James frowned, "I didn't see him anywhere today."

Lily sighed and sniffled. "He must be feeling off the weather. Someone should get his books to him, so he doesn't miss any work."

"Trust me, Lily, Remus can take care of himself when it comes to homework," James said, smiling. "The boy's a smart one."

A conversation could no longer be held since Sirius, Lily, and Peter all simultaneously sneezed multiple times. James couldn't take it anymore, he burst into laughter.