Change Your Mind

Hey, pleez review. not much else to say except that if your good an leave lots of nice reviews the next chapter will have a moment that will make all the litttle fangirls and boys go ---go---well, go something. And their will be in a leter chapter a quidditch game. I hardly ever sees fic were one is depicted so i thought i tried it and i will do my best to fill it withlots of detail and action.


Chapter two:

Help Me Through the Hopeless Haze.



As promised, the next few days of blissful blue skies and warm breezes were lost on the students, who were spending all their free time between classes either in the library studying or in their dormitories practicing. The wave of work and pressure even effected the Marauders, as they were taking their N.E.W.T exams this year. Sirius and James hadn’t taunted a single Slytherin in three days, and even found that Snivellus wasn’t worth wasting their time on. Peter, who was pathetic and worrisome enough on his own, could be found in the Hospital Wing every other hour taking a calming drought after having a nervous breakdown in one of his classes. Even Remus, who was by far cleverer than the rest of them put together was studying so much more than usual that he kept having bouts of memory loss, and would sooner bite off your hand than talk to you if you came across him in the Library.

Tonight, three weeks before their N.E.W.T.s, the Seventh Year Gryffindors had decided to stay up practicing and studying in the common room,(after threatening to hex all the first years back into their dormitories) some looking up the names of famous animagi (“Wonder why our names aren’t mentioned, eh Prongs?” whispered Sirius) or practicing transfiguring their couches into livestock as everything from charmed cushions to disarmed students flew over their heads.

James was currently sitting close to the common room fireplace trying to charm it by prodding at the ashes and whispering “firstravertis!” Finally, a long, snakelike jet of fire issued forth from the tip of his wand and he began to manipulate it to fly about the room, causing Frank Longbottom to curse out loud and drop his cushion as the spell singed the back of his head.

“Sorry, Longbottom!” He said hurriedly after waving his wand and vanishing the fire, gaining a few shushes and glares from the other students at his loudness, “My charms could use a bit of work.”

As he grabbed Sirius’s paper on the uses of aconite in potion making and started to fan his head , which was beginning to smell strongly of burnt hair, he saw that Remus was one of people who was glaring. He was just about to give the git a piece of his mind when he heard Sirius behind him.

“Why don’t you just ask Lily to help you?” He said with a slight snigger as he grabbed back his potions paper.

“I have mate, she wasn’t to keen on the idea.” He said truthfully after checking that Lily was safely on the other side of the room, her face hidden between the cover of a large book. He then preceded to pick up his copy of the Standard Book of Spells, Grade Seven to do the same thing as he flipped through it absentmindedly.

He had remembered the previous mornings charms class. He had seen Professor Flitwick watching and commenting Lily on her summoning charms when he had gotten an idea. Wanting to show Lily and the professor how hard he too had been working he cast a summoning charm on a book on the other side of the classroom. He had placed himself so that when the book came to him it would fly right between her and Flitwick, catching their attention as it soared into his hands. Except that in his haste he hadn’t noticed her perform the same charm on a jar of frog spawn at the same time, and as the book and jar collided in midair the jar broke and splattered both the professor and Lily with filth. Afterwards, if’s Lily’s resulting anger hadn’t been bad enough, Flitwick had given him twice as much homework as anyone else. James knew now that asking for help at that time had been particularly stupid.

“Too bad,” said Sirius, as James jumped out of his menagerie of thoughts and saw that he was talking, “‘cause she is really excellent at Charms.”

“Yeah,” said James, “She really is charming.” remembering her angry face (after she cleaned herself off of course) and how she had accused him of purposefully setting up the fiasco so that he would have an excuse to ask her out on a study date. James lifted his hand and felt the spot on his cheek were she had slapped him and sighed.

“Typical,” muttered Sirius as he rolled his eyes. It was impossible for James to talk about Lily for longer than a minute without going all funny like this.


James’s infatuation with Lily had been drawn out so long that sometimes Sirius began to wonder whether or not they would ever fall for each other, if all of this wasn’t just a game the two played. Nevertheless, he thought as he dipped his quill into his ink bottle and pulled his paper towards him, they were always fun to watch.

* * *


Two hours later and James had finally gotten the hang of the fire manipulation charm, and now didn’t even need the ashes to produce a flame from his wand. Only him and the marauders (well except Peter, who had gone earlier because Sirius had ‘accidently’ turned his leg into a bowling pin.), and Lily were left in the common room, everyone else having gone off to bed. Sirius and Remus were both putting away their things too but before James did he planned on sending a nice big flame in the direction of a particularly well deserving werewolf’s rear end.

Remus had just dropped one of his eagle-feather quills on the ground and was bending over to pick it up. Seeing his target James stealthily moved behind a couch nearer to Remus, his wand at the ready.

“Firstrav-NO!” He shouted, as Lily had suddenly walked in front of Remus, book in hand heading for the girls dormitories. The spell, which wasn’t performed right, had become a small streak of red light, which had hit the large book in her hands, knocking it to the floor with a loud thud.

James leapt up from behind the couch, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” he said as he fervently tried to help her, leaning down to help her pick up her book. At that same time she also leaned down, and even though James couldn’t see her face through her hair, he had suddenly once again felt that indescribable feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

They both picked up the book at the same time, and surprised, dropped it again.

“Oh, it’s you.” She said, determinedly turning up her face which looked angry and out of breath. Wait, James thought, out of breath, how could that be? All she had done that night was read from her book. He picked it up again, now seeing a small burn on the front and the title written in gold across its once handsome cover, “Prefects Who Gained Power.” Since when would anything in this book come up in their N.E.W.T.s? She quickly grabbed it out of his hands though, and looked at the cover, her eyes widening.

“You burnt it! Oh, I can’t believe you, I just bought this!” She said, only she didn’t really say it to him, because now her eyes were searching the floor frantically. She began to move forward towards the girls staircase, muttering under her breath as her head remained down, eyes glued to the carpet.

“ I’m sorry!” James said, finding it hard not to be playful with her even though he was still full of worry. “I meant to hit Remus, not you.” Remus, who was now standing right next to James, then preceded to hit James upside the back of his head.

“Ow, Moony! You would have deserved it you git!” James roared, jumping on top of him. As the pair rolled around on the floor Sirius casually stepped over them, a small piece of paper in his hands.

“Is this what you’re looking for Lily?” He asked sneakily. Her eyes had still been on the floor but as he spoke she looked up, her eyes growing even more shocked as they wandered to his outstretched arm.

“Wonder what it says?” He said with a sneer, as he began to hold it up. What it did say, he never knew though, for in the blink of an eye Lily’s wand was in the air, pointing at the paper.

“Accio!” She screeched.

As the parchment zoomed out of Sirius’s grip, he fell forward. Balancing on one leg, he tried to steady himself, leaning back just as the pair on the floor rolled into him. With an almighty crash he fell on top of the two as they all three screamed, “Hey!”

By the time Sirius managed to look up, Lily was gone.

“Geroffme, Padfoot!” James said, as he pushed Sirius over. He stood up and brushed off his robes, his glasses dangling from one ear. Remus pulled his eagle-feather quill out of his left nostril and stood up, helping Sirius to his feet.

“Did you see what was on the parchment?” Remus asked casually.

“Sorry,” said Sirius, shrugging his shoulders, “didn’t expect she would get all offended and perform that charm, I was only going to tease her with it anyway.”

“What parchment?’ James asked, fixing his glasses and forgetting all about his fight with Remus as his curiosity surfaced. “And how did you know about it Moony?” He said impatiently.

“Oh,” said Remus, waving his hand as if it was nothing, ‘I didn’t see what was going on, but I could still hear Padfoot talking, you probably weren’t paying any attention is all.”

“The note must have fell out of her book,” Sirius said thoughtfully, “you know, when you blasted it, Prongs.”

“Yeah,” James said, “explains why she was reading Prefects Who Gained Power, I would rather eat botuber pus than read that..”

“It’s one of my favorite books.” Said Remus sheepishly and so quietly that no else heard him, then quickly regaining his composure as he added. “It doesn’t really explain it though Prongs, why would she read a note instead of study, what could make it so important?”

“And private,” added Sirius, putting his hand on his chin, “I mean she hid it from all her friends too.”

“If that’s the case then why didn’t she just take it up to her dormitory and read it then, she would have been alone, everyone else was down here.” Said James.

“Probably knew it wouldn’t work,” said Remus, “her friends are a nosy bunch, if she would have left without saying anything they would have just followed her up there and asked her questions.”

“Always knew she was a smart one.” Said James dreamily.

“She could have made an excuse, you know, like she forgot something, then ran up there and read it real quick, and then came back down.” Said Sirius. “Why didn’t she just do that?”

“Maybe it was really important, and she wanted to give it her full attention.” Said James, his dreamy look vanishing as jealous thoughts began to cloud his mind. “I want to know what was on that note, it’s not like Lily to give up studying for something as stupid as note-passing.” Remus and Sirius exchanged a quick glance with one another.

“We’d have a hard time getting to it, she might have already destroyed it.” Said Sirius.

“No,” said Remus, his expression changing as he began to put his mind to work, one of his favorite pastimes, “if it was that unimportant then she would have done what you said earlier Padfoot, and simply destroyed it then, besides, why would she destroy something that she read for more than three hours straight, it would have been to important to her. Although, now that she knows Padfoot knows she was reading it, she’ll probably keep it hidden in her dormitory. Problem is, Lily is a girl.”

“Oh, well spotted Moony!” Said James, clapping his hands. Remus ignored him and continued.

“I heard that there all sorts of enchantments to keep boys out of there, I read about it in Hogwarts, A History. So seeing as we are gentlemen, we won’t be able to get into a girl’s dormitory”

“I know,” said Sirius, “I’ve tried.” He tried to look innocent as the other two laughed, but after a moment was laughing too.

“You know it’s getting late guys, we best get some sleep.” Said Remus after they had all settled down. “We’ll think of something tomorrow.”


“Yeah, another episode of the Hogwarts Soap Opera, starring Lily and James!” Laughed Sirius, as James asked, “What’s a Soap Opera?” The three of them laughed all the way up the stairs.

Later on, after changing for bed and slipping down into their four posters everyone was asleep and snoring, well everyone except for James, that is. The feeling of dread James had earlier was resurfacing now that he was alone and had time to think over that nights events. Although now it was mixed with equal amounts of curiosity and jealousy. Could the note have anything to do with what had happened on the grounds a few days ago?

A snore form the bed across from him, probably Frank, reminded him of sleep, something he would need for the next day of continued studying. James, as it so happened, was planning on becoming an auror, and needed top grades in Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts, in order to qualify. To do this he would at least need some sleep, but with a mind full of questions he found it was quite some time before he too sank into the calming depths of slumber.