The next morning, Lily and James strolled down to breakfast hand-in-hand. When the couple entered the Great Hall together, everything went silent. No one could believe their eyes. James received some very nasty glares from boys in Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, but he wasn’t bothered. Lily however, was frightened by the sight before her. She received fierce looks from a small posse of Slytherin girls and several hysterical girls at the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables were sobbing. The majority of the Gryffindor table merely sat in shock. Lindsay and Theresa shrieked like two banshees and Sirius began to choke- but was ignored. “Moony,” gasped Sirius, “Help. Choking. Can’t. Breathe.” Remus quickly awoke from the shock and muttered the incantation that cleared Sirius’s throat immediately. “Thank you! I thought I was a goner there,” Sirius said as he breathed in a sigh of relief. James and Lily sat down at the table as if they didn’t notice the looks they were receiving and James began to butter his toast. The glares and surprised gawking students multiplied and Lily shrank in her seat to avoid attention. James, still shaken from last night’s dreadful news, was looking at his plate and barely touching his food. Assured by Lily’s squeeze of his hand, James raised his head up to face their friends. He began to tell them what happened, but Sirius intervened, “It’s okay, mate. I already told them. So I reckon we’re staying here for Christmas?” Smiling, James realized that his parents were extraordinary people, and they would not want him and Sirius to be sad. Sirius already seemed to understand this.
~*~
The rest of the seventh year Gryffindor’s day was quite boring, that is, until they got to Defense. The hours dragged by and even lunch didn’t go by fast enough. The reason being that their Defense professor, Gideon Prewett, had scheduled a practice duel against the Slytherins. Normally a duel would be frowned upon, but this was needed to prepare the students for the world outside Hogwarts.
As the Defense room started to fill, Gideon Prewett looked about his classroom. Pictures of the reactions to varying curses and how to fix them decorated the walls. The only widely known curse that was not of the stone wall was the poster mimicking the Cruciatus Curse. Peter Pettigrew had become very ill when he saw it, so Gideon was forced to remove the poster. His desk was adorned with pictures of his deceased mum and dad, he and his brother and, of his younger sister, Molly whom he loved with all his heart. So much, that he had stopped Fabian from strangling her new husband Arthur when they found that she was engaged. When he looked up again, his class was seated and completely silent, even the Slytherins and were all stock still, waiting for him to divide them into dueling pairs. The class was completely serious about learning to properly duel, not the simplified way that they had been taught when they were younger.
“Today,” began Fabian, “you will learn the accurate way to duel and some of its rules. I will pair you off into, er, teams, if you will, and those four teams will compete. The two winning teams of the duels will then battle against each other. There is no using the Unforgivable Curses and absolutely NO firing a spell when the opponent’s back is turned. That is for use only when you are in a desperate situation. The first one to be knocked out loses. All right, here are the teams…”
Four minutes later, the students were sorted into their teams and stood in the four corners of the now empty classroom. A divider was placed in between one half of the room, so the two teams could not see the other two. The first people in each line stepped forward. Theresa was facing off against Remus and Peter was against Lindsay. Professor Prewett blew on his whistle which signaled the beginning of the duel and stepped out of harm’s way.
“Expeliarmus!” cried Theresa. Though she did not terribly want to beat or knock Remus unconscious, she knew that Sirius was on the other side of that divider and her team had to win because there was no way that she was going to let him get away with making her wait to go out with him. He would pay. “Stupefy!” she yelled. Remus dropped to the floor.
“Well done, Miss Fritsch!” exclaimed Professor Prewett. The rest of the opposing team took several steps back in fear. When Remus was roused, he congratulated Theresa and stepped to the back of his team’s line.
On the opposite side of the classroom, Peter was struggling to beat Lindsay at the duel, but the prospects weren’t likely because he had yet to fire any spells. He was merely dodging the spells that were fired at him by Lindsay, much like the animal he transformed into at the end of every month. Suddenly, Peter felt his wand fly from his hand. He quickly dodged a jinx sent to him and in an instant realized his idiotic mistake as he was tied in ropes. Seconds later, everything went black.
Theresa knew that there was no turning back after this. If she could thrash Rosier, then she could go on to beat Sirius, assuming he could defeat Lindsay, which Theresa knew he could. Rosier eyed Theresa hungrily and as they bowed to the other whispered, “With a body like yours, I wouldn’t mind shagging you, even if you are a half-blood.”
Feeling her blood boil, Theresa looked at him, straight in the eye. She spoke silently and slowly, “I hope that you go to hell and rot there for the rest of your pitiful eternity. If I didn’t have so much respect for Professor Prewett, I would hex you until you had no idea who or what you are every time you gather enough energy to think, understand? I am sick and tired of men taking one glance at me and deciding that they’d like to have a go, because I am not like the girls that you can go and shag whenever you please. I am a human being and will be treated with respect. I told myself that I would never, ever let myself become a plaything of men again, not to even one, not you, not my father, not anyone! Do you understand?” When she got no answer, Theresa backed away and began and ended the duel with a quick non-verbal stupefy.
Meanwhile, Lily was having problems of her own, but not with a troubling past. Quickly, she shot a confundus charm behind her back, but her spell missed the target and glanced off the wall, hitting Professor Prewett instead. No one seemed to notice but Lily, who was about to explain what had happened, when Snape shot a stunner at her back. With a gasp, Lily was knocked to the ground with the force of the spell. Only then did a Gryffindor student notice that Professor Prewett had been hit with a confundus, and Lily was left on the ground as blood spilled onto the floor.
While Sirius was dueling Lindsay, he was secretly deciding if he should let her win or not. After much arguing, he decided to let her win. All of a sudden, Sirius heard a cry and matched the voice to Lily. Whatever the matter was, Sirius had to investigate, so he shouted, “Petrifigus Totalus!” followed by an abrupt “Stupefy!” Lindsay began to fall and a nearby student conjured a cushion to soften the fall. Quickly thanking his classmate, Sirius managed his way to the other side of the divider.
To be continued…
A/N~ I am so evil, maybe I should become a DeathEater! I have always wanted to get a tatoo...
C'est La Vie by BellaMurte
Chapter Notes: A/N~ Hey Everyone! Hope all of my readers don't hate me for the long wait for chapter five! I am currently busy at work finishing The Duel II. Also (please don't hate me for this) I am posting a one-shot called Paradise after The Duel I gets up because part one has a major cliff hanger! Please read and review! Love, BellaMurte