Of Home and Pigs
- Hogwarts was different... here people cared about her... they cared that she existed. -
“Rise and shine!” rang James’s voice throughout the boys’ dormitory.
Sirius, Remus and Peter raised their heads a fraction of an inch off their pillows and looked at James groggily and annoyed.
“How ‘bout,” Sirius moaned, “fall and sleep!”
“No way! Wake up people!”
“Why’re you in such a hurry to get up?” Remus asked, his voice muffled due to the fact that his head was in his pillow in a last ditch attempt to get back to sleep.
James went over and pulled the bed sheets off Peter and pulled the shades off the window to let the morning sunlight pour into the room. He then went over to both Sirius and Remus in turn and yanked their blankets off them. Sirius quickly sat up and pulled them back from James and covered his whole body with them.
“What’s wrong with you?” Peter muttered, standing up now and looking at James suspiciously.
“Can’t I be happy in the morning?”
Remus, Sirius (sticking his head out from his sheets) and Peter looked at each other and then at James. “No!”
“Well as long as you’re up…!” James indicated.
The other three gave each other exasperated looks and began to dress.
“We had a nice wakeup call this morning,” Remus said as they all sat at the nearly empty Gryffindor table. It was the third to last day of the holiday break so they were all making the best of the practically empty castle. James sniggered into his oatmeal as he thought about his nice little alarm.
“Let me guess,” Rachael said, setting down her spoon and looking at her brother and friends. “James woke you guys up?”
“Yeah,” Sirius, Remus and Peter said at once. James smiled innocently, but couldn’t get the gleam out of his eye. “Didn’t you do that once before?” Sirius asked James.
James’s eyes went reminiscent. “Yeah I did… I think it was sometime in October… but much better… dropped a nice cup of cold water on each of your heads.”
“Nice how you’re such a morning person,” Rachael muttered.
They spent a good portion of the afternoon out on the grounds having a snowball fight, which was much fun. It was Sirius and James verse Remus and Rachael, while Peter sat on the sidelines constructing mountains of snowballs for them to hurl at each other. Ravenclaw, Alex Anderson, who had stayed behind at Hogwarts for the break, joined them later. With the arrival of him they were able to have even teams so Alex stood on Remus and Rachael’s team while Peter rivaled against them with James and Sirius.
Afterwards, covered from head to foot in bitter cold snow, they trudged back up to the castle to warm up. Rachael, Remus, Sirius, James and Peter sat huddled around the common room fire that evening, trying to stay warm in the deathly cold common room. They talked, through chattering teeth, about the fact that they found it bizarre that Sirius wanted a flying motorcycle.
“What would you need it for?” James asked incredulously as he rubbed his hands together in a feeble attempt to keep them warm.
“To fly,” Sirius answered simply.
They all gave him a look as if to say ‘obviously.’
“Yeah but that’s why there’s broomsticks, Sirius,” Remus pointed out.
Sirius looked thoughtful for a moment but quickly dismissed the subject. They continued on the topic of the last Quidditch match, which had proved in victory for Gryffindor. Of course it wasn’t very surprising that they won, as they were playing Hufflepuff and they were no match.
It started off with the usual releasing of the four game balls, first the two Bludgers, followed closely by the miniscule Golden Snitch, which quickly fluttered off to the opposite end of the pitch, and lastly the red Quaffle, which started the game. Gryffindor immediately took possession of the Quaffle. Gryffindor Chaser, Bridget Becker, soared stealthily through the other thirteen players in the air, weaving her way through the Beaters and other Chasers and stopped right in front of the Hufflepuff goalpost. She hovered in the air for a mere split second, faked to the left but quickly sped to the right and threw the Quaffle straight through the centre goal, making the score ten to zero in Gryffindor’s favour.
Hufflepuff Chaser Lenny Flant took the Quaffle straight after the score and flew speedily across the pitch, dodging a Bludger hit by Gryffindor Beater Craig Johnson. Lenny took aim, shot the Quaffle towards the left hoop but the Keeper, Kirk Gamballi, caught it at the tips of his fingers and sent it hurtling back towards his teammate Malcolm Higgs and he went off back towards Hufflepuff. After Gryffindor scored a second time Gryffindor’s Seeker, Melanie Bigg snatched the Snitch right near the changing room entrance and the game was over. 170-0 Gryffindor.
“That was hilarious when one of the Hufflepuff Beaters hit the Bludger towards the Slytherins by mistake,” Rachael reminisced as she looked into the fire.
The boys laughed.
“Yeah, did you see Snape?” Sirius added, his eyes sparkling with glee at the thought.
“Yep, one second he’s sitting there watching the game like a normal person… well normal as he gets… and then a Bludger comes hurtling at him and his gang of Slytherins!” James laughed.
Peter gave a quick laugh. “Didn’t it get one of them?” he asked.
“Yeah, it slugged Peter Bullstrode right in the face,” Remus answered, hardly able to contain his joy at the thought. “Sent him to the hospital wing for at least a week.”
They went to bed extremely late that night, as they had been talking so long. Then they got locked in an intense match of Exploding Snap in which Rachael, James, Sirius and Peter attempted to finally beat Remus’s winning streak. But their efforts proved futile in the end. Remus took the prize, which was a mountain of Chocolate Frogs.
Two days later the break concluded and the students who had ventured home for the holidays returned, much to the five friend’s dismay. They had enjoyed the empty Gryffindor Tower and having almost the entire castle to themselves, with the exception of the staff. But unfortunately as James put it, “in the words of the old, all good things must end.” This didn’t help much; it only brought Remus to ask him if that was true how come he heard James complaining about the end of the break just the night before.
They sat in Transfiguration the day classes resumed, trying with all their might to transfigure a tissue box into a jewellry box identical to the one on Professor McGonagall’s desk. It was silver, with vine designs on the sides and on the lid a rose twisting around a blank nameplate. It didn’t look too hard to reassemble at first, but they soon realised they would be there an awfully long time attempting to complete their task. James was stabbing his wand at the tissue box repeatedly, muttering the spell so quickly and incoherently that the only thing he achieved were silver sparks shooting out of his wand and showering the student in front of him. Sirius was twirling his wand in his fingers, looking at his box, apparently he seemed to have given up but he still tried occasionally to see that maybe if he waited long enough he would actually get the transfiguration right. Finally, after eight tries, Sirius managed it and earned Gryffindor five points from a satisfied Professor McGonagall. Remus and Rachael got their box to transfigure after seven tries and James managed his right after Sirius. Lily was having the most difficulty so James offered to help her, grinning from ear to ear when she reluctantly accepted his offer. Peter managed nothing to mutate his box so it looked like a melted rubber ball.
“That thing smelled,” Lily commented as she and Rachael walked out of Transfiguration with the boys trailing behind them.
“I’ve smelt worse,” Rachael said reminiscently as she remembered back at the orphanage when some of the misbehaved boys got the brilliant idea to fart in all of the girls’ water bottles, cap them to keep the smell in. And then they proceeded to walk about the building and opening them in front of all of the girls and adults.
Rachael made a face at the thought. “Once you’ve smelt that you’ll never smell anything worse.”
They sat in the Great Hall that night as dinner went on. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were going on about the detention James and Sirius had gotten because Snape spilled their cauldrons over in Potions class and blamed it entirely on the two boys. Of course, being that the professor was head of Slytherin, he sided with Snape and gave them detention that night to scrub the dungeon floors with nothing more than a single toothbrush and a bucket of water.
“Snape’s always given me a hard time,” Sirius muttered into his stew.
“You knew Snape before Hogwarts?” Rachael asked, remembering about her encounter with Snape and Sirius had known immediately who it was.
Sirius nodded.
“I met him once before at Diagon Alley,” he said thoughtfully, a look of pure disgust on his face. “My dear, dear mother wanted to go into Knockturn Alley so I stayed behind and looked around Diagon Alley. As I was walking past the robe shop I saw an ugly patch of greasy hair coming out of the store with some new robes. ‘Sirius Black?’ he asked. I nodded; it wasn’t surprising he knew who I was, as his parents were probably scum like mine… so he said his name was Severus Snape.
“He started saying he was going to Hogwarts the year after that one. I asked what house he wanted to be in and he said Slytherin. I didn’t say anything about it at first until he asked me what house I wanted to be in, I said Gryffindor. ‘You want to be with those mudbloods?’ And so… let’s just say it wasn’t pretty after that.” He made a squelching noise and stamped his foot on the floor.
“Come on,” James said miserably, checking his watch and eyeing the doors into the Great Hall. “Let’s go down to the dungeons now.” Sirius nodded glumly and they bid the others goodbye as they hurried down to their detention.
Remus and Rachael walked out on the grounds towards Hagrid’s cabin out on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. Lily had to go and help Peter with his Charms homework otherwise she might’ve joined them. They were talking about devising ways to cause destruction during their last day of Potions for the year… even though it was far off… one could only dream.
“Well we could always try and burn a hole right through the dungeon floor,” Remus suggested as he broke into a sort of jog as they went down the slope to Hagrid’s.
“Yeah, then if we get it deep enough we could shove the stupid teacher in!”
Remus laughed. They continued down the lawn to Hagrid’s cabin and saw him in the small pumpkin patch behind his cabin. He was sprinkling some pumpkin feed around the patch, preparing them to grow for the spring. Remus and Rachael walked up behind him, inspecting the pumpkins from behind his back.
“Nice, aren’t they?” Hagrid said, so suddenly that the twins jumped, not knowing that he knew they were there. He turned to look at them over his shoulder and they nodded, eyeing the small pumpkin sprouts.
“They are,” Remus said. “How long’ve you been growing them?”
“Oh a month er so,” he answered, stooping down to his knees and sprinkling a pumpkin with feed.
“They’re pretty good for a month,” said Rachael, nodding approvingly and stooping down next to Hagrid to look at a pumpkin that was roughly the size of her head. “Bet they’ll be as big as your hut by the time next Halloween rolls around.”
Hagrid laughed. “That’d be summat, wouldn’t it?” He rubbed the surface of the pumpkin, put his hands on his knees and heaved himself up. He ran a finger through his tangled beard. “So, how’s class bin?”
“Pretty good,” Remus said, walking around the pumpkin, observing the pumpkins. “Teacher’s are already preparing us for our finals!”
“They’re not for five months!” Rachael added.
“Well they like ter get yeh prepared,” Hagrid said, looking at them sympathetically. He remembered that all the students got into frenzies about the finals; they need to pass them in order to pass on to their next year. “But they’re nuttin to worry ‘bout, can’t be too hard, can they? Otherwise none of yeh would pass!”
“Yeah, right.” Remus looked up to see a faded crescent moon in the sky; they’d have to heading back up to the castle soon.
“We’ve got to be getting back up to school,” he said. Hagrid nodded.
“Right, see yeh tomorrow I guess.”
“Bye,” they both said and turned to head back up to school.
As they were walking back up to the castle Rachael began thinking about the approaching summer. Though it was five months away, she didn’t know how quickly these months would go by. She wondered if she would have to go back to the orphanage. Since her dad knew how horrible that place was, maybe he wouldn’t let her go back. Maybe she could stay with him; after all he was her dad. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to stay with him? She had no doubt in her mind that that was what he wanted for her.
But then she wondered… did her dad stay at the castle during the summer holiday? He had his office where he lived during the school year so did that mean he stayed during the entire year? Did he have his own home? It did seem a little absurd to have two separate homes. But, then again, she did too, although one she would never consider a home. Her homes were the orphanage and Hogwarts. The orphanage… she didn’t call it a home. It was just where she lived when she got disowned. She could never say it was her home. The people there, they weren’t her family, they were just people, and more than half of them shouldn’t be called people. They never treated her right… she would bet her life savings that they never would.
Hogwarts was different… here people cared about her… they cared that she existed. They didn’t shove her aside and pretend that she was just there to take up space. She was appreciated here and had family… Remus and her dad… they were the only family she had. She had no mother; no mother would disown her child for an accident she couldn’t control. Her fists clenched in anger as she thought about her mother. The last thing her mother had ever said to her was, “you get away from your brother you brat!”
“What’s wrong?” Remus asked, looking sideways at his sister. Rachael broke out of her trace of thought.
“What d’you mean?” she asked quickly.
“Well you look mad about something.”
“Oh it’s nothing… just thinking.”
“Thinking about where you’re going to go after school’s over?”
“Yeah actually… how’d you know?”
“Well I figured you’d probably be thinking about it sooner or later. So, you think you’ll be able to stay with dad?”
Rachael shrugged. “I dunno, maybe, if he stays at the castle over the break and Dumbledore lets me.”
“He will… Dumbledore’ll let you.”
“Maybe… hopefully you’re right.”
When the twins got back to the common room they saw a few fifth years and third years still left. They searched the room for a sign of Lily or Peter; they doubted James and Sirius would be back from detention yet. If they were serving it with Professor Binstom they would be there forever.
Remus suggested playing a game of Exploding Snap, which Rachael quickly refused and offered to play Wizards’ Chess instead. Remus agreed and waited while his sister ran up to her dormitory to get the set. She came down a minute later and set the chessboard and pieces down on the table.
She gave Remus the white pieces and she the black ones and they began to play.
Just as Remus’s King was about to be checked the portrait hole burst open and in came James and Sirius, looking exhausted and their pants were sopping wet. They trudged over to Remus and Rachael and threw themselves down on the couch behind them.
“What happened to you guys?” Remus asked, looking at their wet pants and red hands.
“Binstom happened to us,” James moaned.
“Two hours!” Sirius whined. “Two hours scrubbing the stupid dungeon floor with a stupid toothbrush! I’m never brushing my teeth again after that!”
“There’s something we needed to know.” Sirius lifted his foot and kicked James in the shins.
“Well, thank Snape for your detention,” Rachael said, as she started clearing the chessboard off the table. “He’ll be having fun over this.”
James and Sirius exchanged quick glances.
“Didn’t think about that,” James said. “We’ll have to do something.”
“Well there’s nothing like a little sweet revenge,” Sirius said, cracking his sore knuckles.
“But first… what’re we gonna do?”
Rachael was wandering down the third floor corridor that led to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. She was looking for her dad the entire day and hadn’t found him anywhere in the castle, so she assumed he must be in his office. After all, where else would he be?
She walked past the Transfiguration classroom and peered inside. Much to her surprise, she saw her dad talking with Professor McGonagall. They were facing the wall, Professor Lupin with his hands folded behind his back and Professor McGonagall looking at a white sheet of paper that was hung on the wall. What was it? She wondered what they could be talking about.
“It can be arranged, can’t it?” her dad asked in a sort of anxious voice.
Professor McGonagall took a step forward and looked as though she was searching for something particular on the sheet of paper. Rachael wished she could read it from where she was standing.
“I’m not sure,” Professor McGonagall said in such a quiet voice that Rachael had to take a step inside the classroom to hear. “I’d have to discuss it with the Headmaster before I could tell you. See right there?” She pointed to a line on the paper; her dad leaned forward to read it. “‘If a student wishes to remain at school, the matter must be discussed with the Headmaster before any action is taken.’”
“I see…. I just wanted to check before I give her any false hopes. She hates the orphanage. She would much rather stay here.”
“What about Remus?”
“Oh he’d go home, stay with his mum, he’s better off there than his sister is.” He checked his watch. “I should be heading to my office now. Severus Snape is serving detention with me in a half hour.”
“Why now?”
“He blew up a Grindylow case in class… destroyed two desks next to it as well.”
Rachael smiled to herself, James and Sirius’s revenge worked after all. Well it was pretty simple in the first place. All they had to do was get Flitwick let them both out of class to, “go to the bathroom,” and then they’d go to the bathroom. But on the way back they took a little detour to the third floor and stopped right in front of the Defence Against the Dark Arts room.
When they were there, Professor Lupin was showing them the wand motions for an incantation and right when Snape raised his wand James muttered a little spell under his breath and watched as sparks shot out of his wand. But they looked like they came out of Snape’s wand and hit the Grindylow case so it blew up, sending the Grindylow flying in mid air and landing on the professor’s desk. In the event two desks blew up as soon as their occupants ducked out of the way of the flying creature.
The prank was a little cruel but, according to James and Sirius, Snape got what he deserved. He should have known better than to mess with the prank masters.
“Rachael,” came her dad’s voice from behind her.
Rachael jumped. “Oh, hi dad,” she said sheepishly.
“Can I help you with something?”
“No… I was just wandering around… I think I’ll go to the Great Hall.”
“Okay.”
Rachael turned and ran down the corridor, and down a few flights of stairs and into the Great Hall where she saw the Gryffindor table, full of students, but absent of her friends. Oh well, she thought as she made her way to the table to sit down and begin to eat dinner. They’ll be here soon enough.
She was thinking about what she heard her dad and Professor McGonagall talking about before. Her dad was trying to get her to stay at Hogwarts over the summer break. She hoped Dumbledore would see things her way and understand how she felt going back to that dreadful orphanage. She wondered why he wouldn’t just let her stay. What had to be considered? Well of course she probably had to ensure everyone she wouldn’t be much trouble, and she knew she wouldn’t if she could stay at Hogwarts.
She chewed a piece of a lamb chop and stared blankly at the enchanted ceiling, which was a misty blue colour, thinking about what would happen if she would end up going back to the orphanage. She didn’t want to go back to that horrible place after spending ten months at school. Her time at school was the happiest time she had in nearly four years.
If she stayed at Hogwarts she’d never have to see the hideous face of Becky Beckham. She cringed at the thought of her roommate. It had been a wonderful five months away from that sorry excuse for a human being.
She looked up at the table; her friends were still nowhere to be seen. As a matter of fact, Frank and Alice weren’t even there. Her curiosity getting the better of her, she abandoned her dinner and went up to Gryffindor Tower to see what the holdup was. She walked up the giant marble staircase in the Entrance Hall, looking around for any sign of her friends. Then she saw some Slytherin sixth years walking by her, cackling madly. They were whispering frantically and Rachael strained her ears to catch their conversation.
“Those little Gryffindor first years didn’t know what hit them!” said one with a pig-like face.
“Hope Moaning Myrtle likes a little company, even though they can’t talk to her. Well, they can snort at her,” said another Slytherin. “Hey wait….” The Slytherin looked at Rachael, who was few steps above them. She stopped in her tracks. “We missed that one!”
Rachael looked over her shoulder to see the Slytherins approaching her. Without thinking for a second, she dashed at full speed up the steps, up another flight, not looking back but knowing that they were chasing her, hearing their footsteps pounding on the floor.
She ran up the flight leading up to the second floor and made a run for Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. She turned to see the Slytherins were nowhere in sight. They actually left her alone. She opened the door to the bathroom and what she saw nearly made her faint with surprise. Inside the bathroom were seven black, fully grown pigs.
“What the-?” She walked over to the smallest of the pigs and moved its snout around, as though that would give her some hint as to who it was. The pig got annoyed and gave a loud snort. Rachael jumped backwards so quickly she fell.
“Ooooh don’t they look adorable?” came a high-pitched voice from behind her.
She wheeled around to see the pearly white, translucent figure of a sixteen-year-old girl with large glasses and messy pigtails.
“Hullo Myrtle,” Rachael said, picking herself up and straightening her robes.
“Oh it’s you!” she said, suddenly realising it was Rachael. “You’ll love this then!” Rachael raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know who they are?”
“I have a hunch…”
“Watch this!” Myrtle glided over to the smallest pig Rachael had been watching and shrieked. “Here Peter!” Immediately the pig sprinted towards Myrtle, who laughed shrilly. She always enjoyed it when others were put in misery.
“THAT’S PETER?” Rachael gasped, looking at the pig.
“Well, he always did look like a pig.”
“How would you know? You never leave this place.”
“Oh I go to the other bathrooms.”
Rachael made a revolted face. “I didn’t need to hear that.” She looked at all of the other pigs. She knew where her friends were now. “Let me guess… the Slytherins did this?” Myrtle nodded gleefully. “Great… Okay then, Remus, James, Sirius, Peter, Lily, Alice, Frank, follow me!” The pigs hesitated. “I said… FOLLOW ME!” Even though they had pig faces, just by looking at them Rachael could tell they were all positively mortified.
Rachael led them up to the Transfiguration classroom and knocked.
“Come in!” came Professor McGonagall’s voice from inside. Rachael opened the door and poked her head in.
“Professor?” she said, eyeing the professor nervously.
Professor McGonagall looked up from her desk. “Yes, Miss Lupin?”
“I have sort of a problem.” She opened the door and shepherded her friends inside.