The Duel
“H- Hey Evans,” greeted James with one hand immediately jumping to his hair.
She sighed, rolling her stunning green eyes. She seemed even more tired than the last time James saw her and there were lines under her eyes that were not apparent before.
“Potter, I should have known.”
“In the flesh.”
“Are you spreading more Death Eater rumors again, or is this something else?” she inquired rather bluntly.
“Well, you know just as well as I do that that was just a bit of fun,” commented James innocently. “At least I’m not collapsing beds on anybody.”
“Why don’t you grow up, and leave poor second and first year students, who don’t know your prat-like ways, alone? Or, perhaps that’s too much of a large concept to get your bloated head to wrap around?” retorted Lily calmly.
The crowd (who were now creating a circle around Lily and James) hooted and cat-called at this blunt piece of sarcasm.
“It was just a bit of head alteration,” grinned James, his confidence boosting with every second the crowd stared at him. “Besides, they weren’t all first and second years.”
“Why don’t you pick on people at your own level, Potter?” stated Lily coldly, frowning at him with utmost dislike though her eyes gleamed faintly with a burning thought; to use James Potter as her outlet for frustration.
“Is that a challenge, Evans?” questioned James, half of him hoping it was, and the other half hoping it wasn’t.
The spectators hooted again as Lily’s frown turned into a smirk.
“It might just be.”
“You sure you’re up to this, Evans?” asked James mockingly as he raised his wand. “I won’t go easy on you just because you’re beautiful.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she replied as she found herself raising her own wand.
The audience fell soundless as a deafening silence appeared for a few seconds as both of them stared at each other.
“Impedimenta!” yelled Lily suddenly, shattering the silence.
James side-stepped awkwardly out of the way as he countered the spell.
“Nice try, but you’ll have to do better than that!” he taunted after her.
She yelled another spell at him as she easily avoided one of his, and it clipped him in the back of the head creating a bald spot.
“You are such a cruel chick!” he yelped as he touched the back of his head.
The crowd erupted in laughter.
She smiled but was struck head-on with a jinx James had just sent flying. Her legs wobbled together uncontrollably, and she realized she had just been hit with the jelly-legs jinx.
“Toerag!” she yelled.
“Beautiful!” shouted James back.
“Scourgify!” she barked before she collapsed on the floor, and James’ mouth filled with soap bubbles.
Using this time, Lily muttered the counter-curse, and she was up on her feet again while James wiped out the remaining soap bubbles in his mouth.
“Mmmm, lemon flavoured,” stated James on the type of soap she had washed his mouth with.
She grasped a nearby garbage can by a water fountain and flung it at him while saying a sticking charm.
“Protego!” he said, and the garbage can stuck to Lily’s left arm.
“Damnit!” she cursed.
“Watch your language, Evans!” called James earnestly.
“Rictumsempra!” Lily yelled furiously, and James was instantly on the ground clutching his sides laughing.
Prying off the garbage can, she flung it at James who just seemed to be recovering from the laughing spell.
“Reducto!” he yelled quickly, and the garbage can burst into a thousand flames right before it slammed into his face.
The audience applauded with cheers.
“Ready to give up yet, Potter?” asked Lily reproachfully.
“I’m just getting warmed up.”
“Tarantallegra!” exclaimed Lily, and James’ feet started to dance uncontrollably. “I believe it’s Italian,” she added with a smug grin.
“Sonorus!” replied James with his feet still dancing.
“HEY!” yelled Lily when she didn’t mean to. “YOU PRAT! I CAN’T CONTROL MY VOICE!”
The spectators giggled.
“PERTRIFICUS TOTALUS!” she shouted, but James magically seemed to dance out of the way.
“Serpensortia!” said James as a snake appeared from his wand.
“WINgarDiUM lEviOsA!” half-shouted Lily in reply as she tried to control her voice.
James flew up into the air, still dancing.
“Real ingenious, Evans,” called James from above.
“SiLEnCIo!” she yelled, and he fell silent.
Moving around the serpent carefully and making sure it didn’t attack any of the on-lookers, Lily racked her brain for the spell she needed. Meanwhile, James was still struggling to get himself down. Lily finally muttered a spell, and the snake vanished as James fell back onto the hard, stone floor, no longer dancing. Glancing up at each other hastily, they both raised their wands and yelled, “EXPELLIARMUS!”
Two bright flashes of light later with some “oohs” and “ahs” from the crowd, James and Lily were standing two meters apart from each other, both of them wand-less.
“Shall we call this a tie then?” questioned James finally with a grin.
Lily’s thought-to-be-permanent frown around James curved into a smile.
“What IS going on here?! exclaimed somebody down the hall, and the crowd started to disperse rapidly, but James and Lily refused to break eye-contact as they remained standing. Both were transfixed and intrigued by the other.
“I guess we will,” said Lily suddenly, and she dashed down the hall, grabbing her wand off the floor on the way, leaving James dumb-struck and wondering.
“C’mon Prongs!” urged Sirius as he tugged on James’ arm.
The invisibility cloak and James’ wand were clutched in Sirius’ hand.
James remained silent.
“Prongs! We have to go before- Professor McGonagall! Pleasant evening, isn’t it?” greeted Sirius with a warm voice.
“Save it, Mr. Black,” she stated immediately. “I have gotten so many complaints about illegal hexing and double sized heads to last me a life time. You and Mr. Potter will have a double detention with me this coming weekend at 10:00 A.M. sharp. I also don’t want to hear any “ifs”, “ands”, or “buts” about it just because it is during a Hogsmeade outing. Fifteen points from Gryffindor!” After she had finished, she turned her back abruptly but then glanced back at James’ bald spot at the back of his head. “Mr. Potter, why in the world do you have a patch of hair missing?
James did not reply.
“Never mind,” she sighed.
She muttered a spell to make hair on the back of James’ head appear once again and walked back in the direction of her office.
“Good job,” remarked Sirius un-amused as soon as Professor McGonagall was out of ear shot. “If you just listened to me, we wouldn’t have double detention.”
“Sorry, what did you say?” asked James, clearly showing he had just realized where he was and what had happened.
Sirius raised an annoyed eyebrow as he started to head back to the common room with James following him.
“I know exactly what Moony is going to say,” started Sirius with irritation. “He’s going to say…”
“I told you so,” stated Remus bluntly as Sirius explained how he and James got double detention.
When the two came back from their fiasco, Remus had just caught them on his way back from prefect duty. They immediately sat in front of the common room fire to discuss how the evening’s events unfolded.
“I said…” started Remus.
“’You always get caught’ I know, I know,” imitated Sirius with a tone of offence. “Well, if it wasn’t for Prongs being so bloody flabbergasted by actually tying in a duel with somebody- “
“Prongs tied in a duel?” asked Remus with a tone of intrigue and immense curiosity. “With whom?”
“Do you even have to ask?” questioned Sirius as he nodded towards James who was sitting in an arm chair gazing at the fire with glazed eyes. It was obvious that he had not heard what Remus and Sirius were conversing about.
“Honestly?!” inquired Remus incredulously after glancing at James’ state for approximately a minute or so. “You cannot be serious!”
Sirius just sighed and nodded.
“Lily Evans? He dueled with Lily Evans, and he tied with her? What do you mean by tied?”
“They both disarmed each other at the same time at the very end before McGonagall came. I have to admit, the girl has fire-power and an interesting choice of spells.”
“Really? Well no wonder Prongs is so dazed.” Remus glanced over at James still staring at the fire. “He has no bloody idea what we are talking about, does he?”
“Not a clue,” replied Sirius while rolling his eyes.
“But will the detention interfere with you-know-what?” questioned Remus as he tore his attention away from James.
“You mean with our outing?”
“Shhh!” remarked Remus instantly as he eyed a group of fifth and fourth year students suspiciously.
“Would you stop being such an up-tight, paranoid freak,” said Sirius bluntly. “No, McGonagall said the weekend. Friday is a weekday in case you didn’t know.”
Remus scowled at him. “I know what a weekday is.”
“Just making sure,” replied Sirius sarcastically as he pushed back his dark hair casually.
A pair of girls coming through the portrait hole giggled.
“I was just making sure that you could still do it, because I don’t want you guys falling asleep in the middle of detention,” Remus said, while realizing that he was losing the attention of Sirius to the pair of girls.
“It doesn’t matter. Prongs and I fall asleep all the time.”
“Padfoot! That’s horrible.”
“Keep your pants on Moony, I was only joking around.” Sirius smiled charmingly at the girls, and they both blushed a light rose colour. One of them touched the side of her cheek and
whispered into the other’s ear.
“You know,” started Remus briskly. “If you keep flirting with those girls, you won’t get a certain someone’s affection.”
“W- What?” asked Sirius with surprise, breaking his usual suave attitude.
Remus just shrugged casually, but it was obvious he was holding in a faint smile. Sirius had now lost total interest with the two girls that he was flirting with.
“What did you say?” demanded Sirius somewhat annoyed.
“Well, you didn’t care to listen,” replied Remus smugly. “I guess you’ll never know.” With that, he got up from his seat and climbed the stairs of the boys’ dormitories.
“You know, he is right mate,” came a voice suddenly, and Sirius turned back to face James.
“Right about what?!” inquired Sirius now with a tone of bewilderment.
“I was day-dreaming, and even I heard. Oh, and by the way, it’s so obvious.”
“What’s obvious?!”
James threw his head back laughing. “Well, you didn’t care to listen.”
The next few days passed by exceptionally quickly. The amount of homework being given per each class was surmounting greatly, and most students were too hard at work to keep gossip coming around. Even the duel between Lily and James barely circulated at all (if it did), so luckily, Professor McGonagall or any other professors never caught word of it.
Even the Marauders were hard at work hastily finishing essay after essay and reading at least three chapters in each subject.
Remus Lupin was now seen almost permanently by the fire in the Gryffindor common room reading up on each subject until the exhausting late hours of the evening or the early light of morning.
Peter Pettigrew was often seen running back and forth from the library and the common room. Sometimes, he could be found struggling with a certain question at a table in the library with other thick books as company. Other times he was with Remus, cramming in some late reading.
Sirius Black was most commonly seen reading under the beech tree near the lake even when winter’s chill nipped ferociously at him. The reason why he was outside most of the time even when there was ten centimeters of snow on the ground, puzzled some for a short bit of time until they realized that that was one of very few places where no one else wanted to go. Therefore, many people left him alone there. He didn’t usually take notes as Remus and Peter did, but just read and carried his other subject text books he wasn’t reading in his book bag.
The last of the Marauders, and the gang ringleader, James Potter, was actually seen the least common of the four. Most of the time, he was observed to go from class to class chatting away with his class mates, the Marauders, or some girls sucking up to him to persuade him to take them to Naomii’s Christmas party. James was evidently the least stressed about the sudden homework load because of the way he behaved. Some would even say he only had one pair of lines under his eyes instead of three or more like everybody else. Another curious note was that he seemed to literally vanish after classes, re-appear for dinner in the Great Hall, and then disappear once again without a trace.
Some people were curious and wanted to know where the famous James Potter would go. Some guesses were that he wasn’t studying at all and was instead sneaking off to Hogsmeade. Other inferences were that he might be in various empty hallways under the invisibility cloak.
Unfortunately, every single student (which included the other three Marauders) was too busy drowning up to their ears in homework to find or figure it out.