The Order of Mischief I

1.6

Most of the first week of classes had passed, leaving the children exhausted and confused as to how their professors could hand out so much homework and act like it was okay. It made no sense to them, especially since each teacher had to mark everyone's essays, from first to seventh year students. And the newbies had all received at least three essays to do over the weekend, with barely any time to sit around lazily and enjoy their first weekend at the castle.

"So much work," Peter Pettigrew whined to no one specifically, but himself, while seated within the Great Hall, hours before dinner. He was a first year student with blonde hair and a body that looked a little chubby since he was quite short. He was sat with most of his classmates, except he was tucked away in the corner. He snubbed the seat, in the belief that his friends, James, would not join them. But to his surprise, James' addiction to competition and being the perfect boy lead him to the Great Hall.

Peter had managed to keep an awkward quiet profile, despite his friendship circle. He was noticed and recognised for being friends with James and Sirius, but he was far more quiet than the other two. At least that was until he was seated near James Potter, Sirius Black or any Zion girl - the boys spoke too loudly to let him peacefully hide in silence; and the girls were famous for their dark heritage and for always talking through classes. The Zion's would work and talk during their lesson times, all of them but Eralia, who thought herself too mature to mess around during class. She would only talk to discuss the work or anything academic related; Peter was glad to have not been asked to work with her yet. The same could not be said for James, who sat beside the oldest silver-eyed girl in his Charms lesson, often being criticised for his efforts.

Peter had heard many stories about the Zion girls' ancestry, especially since many of his peers asked about it in their first lessons. The girls paid no attention to the narrative that had grown dull to them, and the professors made no effort to ask them about it. But the part of the whole ordeal that seemed unusual to Peter was the fact that many students started to create rumours about them and their own lives. Some claimed that the girls had mastered the Dark Arts, just as every Zion family member did, to boast about their pureblood mania. Others whispered that they were as ordinary as everyone else, and most likely stole the surname to pretend being someone important within the wizarding world. But Peter did not believe any of them, because they were nice to him, particularly Anya, who spent their last Potions lesson making quiet jokes with him as she messily completed her first potion with James Potter - a pairing that Professor Slughorn had arranged.

The first years had neglected the segregation of the houses as they sat together, surrounded around one table as they struggled with their first essay. Several seniors walked into the hall and commented on the familiar sense of struggle that they still dealt with, but learnt to quietly suffer from. Anya was sat near Peter as she sneakily looked at his notes, trying to compare her work to his, to see if she could steal anything from him. But he had no new information to offer, she copied all she could from him, just as he had done from her. Luckily, to her right was Phoebe who was trying to copy off of Remus Lupin, who was halfway done with his essay. Almost everyone around the table was copying someone else's work, but trying to be secretive about it.

"Dammit James!" Naomi Crowe, from Hufflepuff, scolded. Her ink box had bubbled and splattered over her hand. She was lucky it did not land on her homework, but her anger left her to continue insulting the boy. It was easy to blame any prank on him or his best friend, especially as they spent most of this week behaving like class clowns and teasing their friends. James, however, had a tough time trying to stop Sirius from harassing Severus Snap, a child who was determined to snobbishly prove himself better than the two boys. Of course, James successfully kept his friend from starting fights with Severus, but that did not stop their classmate from making foul comments about them.