𝐿𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒

A Fever and Thrown Fists

A/N: Character's thoughts are italicized!

...

It wasn't often that one of the members of their eight-person clan got sick. They all praised themselves for their abnormally strong immune systems, yet there had to be an odd occurrence that somebody gets ill.

January came and went, leaving February for all the students to survive through. The calendars had soon been set to one of Lily's least favorite days of the year—February 14 or Valentine's Day.

Lily had never been so jealous of a person in her life, which she supposed could be selfish of her as Marlene hadn't meant to get sick. She wished she could've stayed in the hospital wing all day to avoid all of the surrounding lovebirds.

The only reason she could get away with calling other people lovebirds and not be a hypocrite was that James shared the same hate for the holiday.

"Merlin! One more doe-eyed girl and I throw up! That's a promise!" Lily groaned as she walked into DADA with Sirius.

"You better shut your eyes then," Sirius commented as they passed yet another nauseating couple.

Thankfully, the walk to the DADA classroom was a short one, making it much more bearable for the two teens. They entered the classroom with much trepidation because it looked as if every time they were in there, something bad happened.

The pair had gotten a total of four detentions in the past three weeks—which was a record for Lily—awarded to them by the DADA professor. Sirius had set off a number of dung bombs, Lily had talked back, either way, the pair had gotten in trouble one way or another.

Craig Geyer also happened to have DADA with them, but unlike Sirius and Lily, Professor Witman didn't seem to mind the boy's presence. The rest of the students in the class just appeared to be along for a hell of a ride.

"Today, we will be going over page 258 of your textbooks as a class. I'd like you each to read a paragraph, starting over here with Mr. Black," Witman stood in front of the class with his hands folded.

Sirius took a deep breath before exchanging a look with Lily, who sat sharing a textbook with him as she had forgotten hers. Then, he began to read.

"In this chapter, you will read over many different curses, which can be used for good and for bad things. It all depends on the wizard or witch that is using them as it is up to them to decide what their motive is."

That's a bit morbid...

"Miss Evans, would you please continue?"

Lily cleared her throat before sliding the textbook over to her side of the table.

"A particularly powerful and intrusive spell is Legilimens, the spell that gives people skilled in Legilimency the ability to read others' minds like a book. This also gives them the ability to turn the person's feeling against them."

"What's another intrusive curse?" Professor Witman asked the class. "Yes, Craig?"

"The Imperius curse, sir, one of three of the Unforgivable Curses," Craig answered.

"Mr. Snape, if you were to use the Imperius, how would you go about doing so?" Witman addressed Snape, who had sat at the back of the class in complete silence.