The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

The Insulting Parchment

James flushed and snapped the parchment up hurriedly.

"Doesn't work very well, does it?" Lily asked. "And are you sure you got this from Zonko's? Look, it's on James's Gryffindor stationary..."

Sirius said, "What do you think, Evans, that we made it ourselves? Bloody hell, we aren't geniuses. We're barely passing our classes..." And they scurried off the four of them clutching the parchment to their dormitory.

James was just thankful to have something to distract him. Working on the Map was his main focus, and he used it to keep his mind off Maryrose Jenkins. Every time he had free time, he found his mind wandering off to her and he'd forget now and then that they'd broken up and he'd start to go over to the Hufflepuff table in the morning at breakfast, only to be caught 'round the shoulders by Sirius or Peter, and steered away. He missed her, and his heart ached and he wished he could talk to her again. He was sorry that he'd never had those conversations with her that she'd wanted.

Of course he also knew that whatever he was going through with the break up, Maryrose was going through it ten times worse.

"I feel like I ought to send her a card or something," James said one night, "Mum always sends people cards when they're going through hard times. To cheer them up."

"I don't reckon a card from you would help her about now, mate," Sirius said, "I think you need to leave her alone."

James knew he was right, of course, but he felt like a miser and he was very careful to keep his eyes averted from her during the classes they had to gether - Care for Magical Creatures, Divination and, worst of all, Herbology. Professor Virdi had refused to let them switch work partners, even after James had pleadingly explained that they'd broken up and Viridi had said, "If I let every student who snogged their Herbology partner split apart when they broke up, the entire seventh year would need separate tables!" So they were forced to work together during all their Herbology classes and Maryrose's voice shook every time she had to speak to James and he still couldn't quite look at her, and both of their grades suffered greatly in the class as a result.

Divination class was hard for a whole other reason.

The new Divination teacher, Professor Clearwater, had turned out to be quite an interesting person, really. At first, James had really thought she was interesting. She was the daughter of a Native American Shaman, who taught divination at Ilvermorny (it had turned out that Meg Johnson actually recalled Professor Clearwater's mum once she'd been reminded - her brother had taken the Divination course at Ilvermorny, though she'd opted out of the elective herself), and now Professor Clearwater was here in the UK and Dumbledore had asked her to fill in for the open position that Kostos Mopsus had vacated by dying.

Native American mysticism, it turned out, involved a good deal of dancing and singing and burning of sage, which made James sneeze quite a lot. And he never quite understood exactly what it was Professor Clearwater was pointing out in the tendrils of smoke that rose up from fires that she set in a great brass plate that sat in the center of the Divination room's floor. Sirius had a bloody blast, though, jumping about around the fire as Professor Clearwater instructed them. He looked wild and insane as he did it and many of the other students whispered that Sirius Black was positively mental while they watched him at it.

"Your boyfriend looks mad," said a Ravenclaw girl, leaning over to speak lowly to Remus.

"That's because he is," Remus replied solemnly.

It was that third week - just before the Full Moon - when the first big success since the appointment of Harold Minchum as Minister for Magic happened.