Life Of The Maurauders: 1

Defense Against The Dark Arts

It was Sirius' turn to be relieved now. "Thanks, James."

James nodded and patted his friend on the back. "You're welcome, Sirius. And don't worry..." He hesitated. "I won't tell anyone."

Sirius gave James an unexpected hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." he gasped. "I don't normally give people hugs by the way, so consider yourself lucky, Potter." Sirius smirked after releasing James.

James rolled his eyes.

They rushed off to Defense. By the time they opened the door, everyone was seated and their books were out. But there was no teacher in the room - only a small dog.

James and Sirius, who hadn't noticed the dog, breathed a sigh and considered themselves lucky for not getting caught by the Defense teacher - until the dog turned into a human.

"Little late, aren't we, boys?" the teacher said flatly.

"See, Evans, I was right!" Sirius yelled to Lily after getting over the initial shock of seeing the dog turn into a teacher. "It is a male teacher - hah!"

Lily rolled her eyes at Sirius. "Whatever." she replied snarkily.

"Settle down." the teacher said sharply. "I am Gideon Lockhart, and I am your new Defense teacher."

"How did you turn into a dog?"

"Take out your books and turn to page ten."

"Page ten?" Lily spoke up incredulously. "Page ten? Professor Lockhart, I'm sorry, but pages one through nine-"

"Is loaded crap that we won't need to learn at this point in time." Professor Lockhart said flatly. "Topic two is much more important, Miss-?"

"Evans, Professor."

"Evans. Okay. Now, at this point in time, when the one who calls himself Lord Volde-"

"Don't say it."

Professor Lockhart looked over. The other boys, too, looked shocked at Peter.

"Please don't say it." Peter begged. "Please."

Professor Lockhart raised his eyebrow, but continued with, "You-Know-Who. Whatever. At this point in time, topic two in this book will come far more in handy than topic one, which is just the spell expelliarmus. It's easier than you think, I dunno why it's even in there. Should be in Charms, it should. Expelliarmus can't defend you against the Dark Arts. It won't help. But I suppose for the sake of it we could try the spell once." he said grudgingly.

"Now, into pairs..."

Sirius and James went together, as did Remus and Peter. Lily scowled when Professor Lockhart made her join James and Sirius.

"Now, you, Mr, uh, okay, Potter, point at...ah, Sirius, you say? ...and you, ah, Peter you say, point at Mr... Remus?...Just give a quick swoop and say 'expelliarmus!'"

Peter's 'quick swoop' resulted in him throwing his wand at Remus and hitting him in the chest. James successfully disarmed Sirius, who tried to cheat by keeping a firm hold on his wand. But the wand squeezed out of Sirius' grasp and flew into James' outstretched hand.

"Now, Miss...ah, Lily, point at James and do the spell. Peter, try again." Lockhart instructed.

This time Peter was successful. Lily managed to disarm James swiftly after chiding him for cheating - his wand couldn't fly out of James' firm grip, at which Sirius sulked.

Then Sirius had to disarm Lily, while Remus finally got a chance to try disarming.

Sirius disarmed Lily perfectly. Remus, however, couldn't disarm Peter. He tried twice, but even when Peter hung his wand loosely by his side, Remus couldn't disarm him.

Professor Lockhart sighed. "We'll try again next week, Lupin...alright, now, let's get ready to do topic two! We've wasted enough time as it is. Now, here we go. Let's see how well you fare..."

***

"Stupid ruddy essay." Sirius groaned.

"Maybe you wouldn't have to write two essays if you hadn't sassed Lockhart." Remus snickered.

"My, my, Black." James laughed. "That was a sassy response you gave."

Sirius laughed reluctantly. "I wasn't that sassy."

"When he asked you where your wand was, you told him it was in your trunk because it didn't have a pair of legs to follow you here." James laughed.

"Ah." Sirius smirked. "I'll just get Bilius or Arthur Weasley to help me out - one quick spell would do it."

"Ignorant git, you'll have to do it on your own." Remus chuckled.

"How does that make me ignorant?" Sirius said incredulously.

"Well, you-" Peter tentatively began.

"Shut up Peter. Don't care." Sirius shot back flatly. "I know my faults, boys!"

When they reached the Potions classroom, the Ravenclaws were already there. The Gryffindors - considerably smaller than the Ravenclaw first years - waved at the Ravenclaws, who smiled and waved back. At that moment, the door opened, and in came a Professor. The boys had seen him at the teachers' table earlier on, but they hadn't expected him to be this...big...in person.

"My name's Professor Slughorn." the Professor beamed. "Nice to have you all in my class, bright young people indeed! Anyway, today we're going to get started on something fun and easy. This potion is called a Shrinking Solution, but it doesn't work like a Reducio, which is a spell that makes things smaller in size. For example, if I fed it to a...let's say a toad. The toad would become a tadpole again."

"The recipe is on page three...pages one and two are mere introductions that even the youngest and most inexperienced of potioneers could make. We're just going to skip ahead today. Let's go! Cauldrons are on the tables, as you can see, ingredients all laid out too. After brewing the potion, test it on the frog in the container on the table. Get into pairs, please. One, two, three, START!"

Bewildered by the sudden start to the lesson, the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors sat stunned for a moment. Then everyone suddenly snapped back to reality and got started.

Lily ended up grouping with a Ravenclaw girl named Lexia Drew, seeing as she didn't have a Gryffindor partner and Lexia didn't have a Ravenclaw one, either.

By the end of the lesson, the only pairs that could brew the potion decently were James and Sirius, and Lexia and Lily. Remus and Peter could have brewed the potion fantastically, but Peter ended up putting in armadillo bile instead of armadillo quills, and they ended up having their potion in neon green, poisoning the frog. Slughorn yelped and ended up having a dozen dead frogs on his hands. James and Sirius had purely been lucky - they saw that Lily had put in an ingredient they hadn't, and, trusting her magnificent performance in the previous classes, they hastily rebrewed the potion and earned a proper Shrinking Solution. Lily hadn't noticed them spying, and they gave each other a silent high-five under the table.

Along the way to their next class, they bumped into the Slytherins, who were walking to Defense.

"Sev!" Lily said brightly, hurrying over. "Sev!"

Severus flushed. Evan Rosier and Antonin Dolohov raised their eyebrows, questioning Severus silently.

James and Sirius snickered, and they decided to 'leave snivelling Snivellus to it'. Peter hastily followed. Remus hesitated, staring at Lily being all uncomfortable, he realised he wanted to help. But then he sighed and followed his friends. "Wait up, guys." he sighed.