Close Call
- "I studied!" -
Rachael woke the next day, thinking it was a Monday for some odd reason. She looked over her to her clock to discover that it was half past nine. Frantic, she rolled off her bed, landing with a loud and painful thud on the dormitory floor, and proceeded to climb to her feet, but she was tangled up in her beds sheets.
Untangling herself as fast as she could, she jumped up and started to run to the bathroom, after grabbing a pair of robes. Then she realised something. If it was a school day, why were Lily and Alice still sleeping? She crept over to Lily and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Lily?” she whispered.
Lily gave a long moan and rolled over onto her stomach, muttering something about that it was too early to be woken up on a Sunday.
“It’s Sunday?”
“Yeah, now leave me alone,” Lily answered groggily.
Rachael nodded and went back over to her bed. There was nothing to do now, no reason in going back to sleep since she was already awake. She decided to get dressed and go down to the Great Hall to check if James and Sirius were there. If they weren’t there, she’d just eat breakfast and head off to check if Remus was out of the Hospital Wing yet.
Walking through the common room, she saw that the Quidditch team was assembled around the table, talking in hushes. They were probably discussing this year’s plays and opponents. The Gryffindor team was comprised of sixth year and captain for three years, Alexandra Lewis, Beater, a pretty brunet who fed off Quidditch; if they canceled Quidditch at Hogwarts she would literally have a heart attack right then and there, which is why the staff avoided doing so. There was one time when she made the team practise night and day for three weeks for a big match with Ravenclaw. The game was canceled due to an injury on the Ravenclaw team and Alexandra started hyperventilating, and had to be rushed to the Hospital Wing.
Alexandra’s fellow Beater was Craig Johnson, an African seventh year who had been on the team as a reserve for Billy Braxton, but was moved up when they saw how spectacular he was. Some said the Bludgers cowered in fear of him. One second they would be swerving right towards a Chaser and he would just twist his broom towards the Bludger and it zoomed right past his teammate and into an opponent.
Next there were the three Chasers, the scorers of the games. They take the Quaffle, a large red ball, and shoot it through one of three hops. The Chasers were third year Benjamin Patil, seventh year, Bridget Becker, and fifth year, Malcolm Higgs. They were the most skilled Chasers in the school; they manoeuvered all of their moves perfectly, and never missed a shot.
Then there was Kirk Gamballi, the fourth year Keeper. Tall and large he was, thus he was perfect to block a hoop. Last was the Seeker, Melanie Bigg. The Seeker was the most important. She had to catch the tiny golden snitch and win the one hundred and fifty points for the team. Melanie was extremely talented at Quidditch; she had only lost them a game three times in the four years she had been on the team.
“Hi Rachael,” Kirk said, looking up from a long sheet of paper with all sorts of arrows doodled on.
“Hi,” Rachael answered back. “First game's next week, right?”
He nodded and said they were going to massacre Hufflepuff.
Rachael climbed through the portrait hole and set off down the passageway to the Hospital Wing. She peered through the small glass window on the door and saw Madam Pomfrey replacing the sheets on some beds.
She knocked on the door and Madam Pomfrey gestured for her to come in.
“Is my brother here?” she asked, poking her head through the door.
“Oh no, I let him go just a few minutes ago. He should be in the Great Hall right about now,” Madam Pomfrey said as she fluffed a pillow.
Rachael made her way down to the Great Hall, only to be stopped by Peeves overturning a full to bursting garbage pail on her head, covering her in filth and muck. Luckily, just as Peeves was gliding away, Professor Lupin appeared as he was heading down to the Great Hall to eat and told Peeves the Bloody Baron was going to be hearing about it and he cleaned his daughter up.
In the Great Hall, she saw James, Sirius, Peter and Remus sitting at the very end of the Gryffindor table, closest to the staff. She slid into the seat besides James and listened in on their conversation as she loaded some eggs on her plate.
“Dunno about that,” Sirius said as he took a spoonful of oatmeal. “McGonagall isn’t going to give us a test when we just had one three days ago.”
“Yeah, but Evans said McGonagall said we were going to,” James argued. “Besides, we haven’t done anything except review the transfiguring of a match box into a tissue box, which was on the first test anyway.”
“Why don’t you just ask her?” Remus muttered.
“I don’t want to go giving her ideas!”
Sirius sniggered in his oatmeal, but quickly changed it into a hacking cough.
“Remus, you feel okay?” Peter asked, peering at Remus.
Rachael took a quick glance at her brother to see his face was pale and had dark circles under his eyes; at least his face wasn’t cut up like it was when she found him the other day.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said in a way that made it clear this wasn’t a topic to discuss.
“But-”
“He said he’s fine!” Rachael said for him, she wasn’t going to let Peter press her brother about this subject anymore than he already did.
They spent the rest of their breakfast debating about whether or not they were going to have a Transfiguration test. James was still fretting about having one. But the only reason he thought they were going to have one was because he heard Lily telling Alice they were. Other than that, he had no other proof. Sirius, Remus, Peter and Rachael said they weren’t going to have one and he had nothing to worry about.
Besides, James had panicked the last time they had a test in Professor McGonagall’s class. He hadn’t studied, unless you called playing Exploding Snap studying, and ended up blowing up the matchbox he was supposed to be transfiguring into a tissue box.
“Yep, I’ve never seen a box go up in flames like that!” Remus joked.
“Oh shut up!” James laughed as he flicked a piece of bacon in Remus’s face.
“Well, you couldn’t exactly say you were studying either, Remus,” Rachael said.
“I studied!”
“Yeah you did... a half hour before class. You spent all night making a rubber rat float into our dormitory.”
“Well, I was practising my Charms, Flitwick would be proud. I passed anyway.”
During the next few weeks there wasn’t much going on that was worth remembering, with the exception of Peeves setting off ten cases of Filbuster’s Fireworks in the Slytherin common room. It was so full of smoke that you couldn’t see your nose in front of your face.
“Even Snape with that big honker couldn’t see it,” Sirius joked as they walked past Snape the day after the incident. But today all the students were looking forward to the Halloween Feast. Rachael, Lily, Remus, Sirius, James and Peter walked past the Great Hall on Halloween morning and smelt pumpkin wafting into the Entrance Hall. They peered in and saw large flocks of live bats swooping up and down and circling around the floating candles and large pumpkins on each side of the staff table.
None of the first years could think of anything else other than the feast. Being that it was their first one, it was guaranteed to be the best. James had heard Nearly Headless Nick was to do a reenactment of his execution with the Bloody Baron as his executioner. The Fat Friar and the Grey Lady were supposed to be working on a singing duet, Sirius heard. Rachael had heard the same rumor from Alexandra Lewis; she had told her that it was supposed to be one of the hits from the Weird Sisters.
As they were sitting in Transfiguration, trying to transfigure a pumpkin into an apple, Professor McGonagall noticed that clearly all the first years’ minds were elsewhere and not in her class. So, as a Halloween treat, she let them off work for the rest of class, something that was unheard of in her classroom.
“Watch out, here come the bats again,” Remus pointed out as a swarm of bats swooped over them as they ducked their heads.
All the students were gathered in the Great Hall for the Halloween Feast. All of the tables were covered in candy treats. Every single person was suddenly ravenous, grabbing every bit of candy within reach of them. Chatter was lively, all the students anticipating the ghost acts, which were always spectacular.
“Those bats have been circling over us for ages!” Sirius exaggerated as he attempted to catch one in flight. “Why do they keep doing it?”
“’Cause they love you so much, Sirius!” James joked as he bit into a candy apple.
“Wouldn’t that scare them away?” Remus muttered innocently.
Sirius gave Remus a shove in the shoulder. “Well they haven’t seen you yet, have they? If they did, they’d be in China now.”
Rachael was sitting opposite of Peter, next to Lily, as they talked about the latest potions accident, this one involving a Slytherin and a mutated Colour Changing Potion. The details are far too gruesome, but that just makes it more fun to write!
Class started out normal enough, normal meaning the professor putting down the Gryffindors, making cruel remarks about their work, praising the Slytherins, so normal enough for a class with Slytherins, that is. Yet again, Rachael was paired with Snape. She had pleaded one too many times with Professor Binstom to have her partner changed (James, Sirius, Remus, Peter and Lily also contributed to the pleading saying that being paired with Snape was a form of cruel and unusual torture… big mistake to do that… ten points were deducted from Gryffindor).
So, after a long arguement with Snape about how many rose thorns they should add, Snape decided to add just a thorn less, thinking it would be a nice little joke he could blame on Rachael. But the result was far less exciting than he thought it would be. First off, when mixing rose thorns and daisy roots you already have to be extremely careful because the slightest fault in the mixing causes terrible results. Rachael could tell you that.
Nothing seemed unusual with the potion, aside from the fact that the boiling was twice as fast as it should have been, but it was still relatively undetectable. So, as Snape went over to check the blackboard to make sure they were doing everything else right, Rachael continued stirring the potion to make sure all the potions were boiling equally, something started to smell. It was an odd sort of stench, hard to tell, sort of a mixture of rotten eggs, old meat, or (if you please) dirty underwear. Everyone in the room starting gagging and fanning their noses in attempt to block out the choking smell.
Assuming it was something coming from out in the hall, everyone resumed their normal working pace, thinking nothing of the nauseating stink. Another few minutes passed and Rachael began to notice the potion becoming a light blue colour instead of the blood red colour it should have been. When she pointed it out to Snape, he simply ignored her. Trying to figure out what she could have possibly done wrong, Rachael wandered mindlessly away from her table reading the instructions, only to be brought abruptly back to reality by a loud boom and screech. She wheeled around to see blue goop all over the dungeon floors, all over students’ shoes, on people’s robes, on the desks, everywhere. But mostly on Snape, who was now so blue he could have been the Ravenclaw mascot.
Funny though it was at the moment, it wasn’t so once she was being told off by Binstom for something she didn’t do.
“Well, it was pretty funny,” Lily said, taking a slab of Honeyduke’s Chocolate off one of the golden platters in front of her. “Snape… blue… it’s just funny!”
“Well, yeah, the ugly git got even uglier!” Rachael laughed as she peered over at the Slytherin table to see Snape looking highly disgruntled, which was not surprising. He hated anything fun so why would he enjoy the Halloween Feast?
“Hey, Remus, you feel okay?” she heard Peter ask.
Quickly, Rachael turned her head to see what they were talking about. Then she remembered the full moon was the next night. Luckily, Remus quickly said he felt all right. But he didn’t look it, his face was incredibly pale, but fortunately he was feeling fine.
The Halloween Feast was a huge success; everyone left there satisfied, even the Slytherins couldn’t deny it had been fun. Nearly Headless Nick had a spectacular act. He and the Bloody Baron managed to scrounge up a fake axe. The Bloody Baron found a thick black mask with eyeholes cut out and acted as Nearly Headless Nick’s executioner, while they reenacted his execution. It was pretty gruesome, but undeniably the best.
The Fat Friar and the Grey Lady tried doing a duet, but it was cut short by Peeves, feeling suddenly reckless, bringing down a chandelier or two in the Entrance Hall and all the teachers and ghosts went out to try and fix the mess.
As the first years made their way up to Gryffindor Tower they looked in on the mess and saw Professor Flitwick attempting some charms to try and mend the chandeliers. James, Sirius, Peter and Lily all went to bed straightaway when they got up to the common room, but Rachael wasn’t feeling tired and neither was Remus.
“I’d go to sleep, if I were you,” Rachael said to Remus as she watched her friends’ feet retreat up the steps leading to the dormitory. “Full moon, you know,” she said in a whisper to make sure she was unheard.
Remus shook his head and sat down on one of the squashy armchairs. “I’m used to it,” he said offhandedly. He tried looking for something funny to talk about. “James and Sirius are planning a prank on the Slytherins again.”
“About time,” Rachael laughed. “Last one they pulled was the Fart Foods, smelly, but effective.”
“Yeah, this one’s going to be The Amazing, Walking, Talking Attachable Nose the size of a dungbomb.”
“Gee I wonder what that’s for…”
Remus laughed. “No clue,” he said innocently. “But I’m going to miss it, like I missed the first.”
“Oh, right… full moon. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more pranks before we graduate.”
“Yeah. I’m going to go to bed right now, see you in the morning.”
“Guess I’ll go too.”
They trudged up the winding staircase and went to their dormitories. As Rachael was walking into the girls’ dormitory she heard Lily from behind her.
“Full moon, aye?”
Rachael’s eyes widened as she spun around and saw Lily glaring at her, hands on hips, stern and curious, waiting for an explanation.
“F-f-full moon? What’re you talking about?” Rachael stuttered, trying to remain calm, but failing in the attempt.
“I heard you,” Lily said stalking towards Rachael. “Full moon! What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t!”
“You do!”
Rachael couldn’t take it; she whipped her wand out of her pocket and held it towards Lily. “Listen, you weren’t supposed to hear that! So just forget about it!”
“No I won’t.”
“Then I’m going to make you forget about it. Obliviate!”