Up until dinner time, Alice's new Bowtruckle pet remained seated on her shoulder, no matter where she went. The other students kept coming to her, telling her how adorable he looked. But Woody was so shy that whenever a crowd gathered around them, he would jump down and hide himself in her robe's pocket over her chest.
"Isn't he the cutes?" Alice said with a giggle as the girls left the Great Hall after their meal. She had a biscuit in hand from dessert and kept taking small pieces of it before handing it to Woody who was sitting on her shoulder again, taking the biscuit pieces from her with his tiny green hands and eating them eagerly.
"Al, I'm sure Professor Kettleburn wouldn't approve if he knew you had taken one of the Bowtruckles back to the castle," Lily said in a whisper to Alice, looking around to make sure none of the teachers was around to see the creature, knowing that they would get into trouble for having it.
"His name is Woody, and I'm sure it's fine," said Alice, her attention on the little Bowtruckle who was nibbling on the last piece of the biscuit. "Besides, it's not like I've brought him here against his will. Woody wanted to come here with me. He wouldn't get back on the tree. I think the other Bowtruckles bullied him, cause... cause he was tinier than the rest of them," she whispered the last words quietly, as though afraid that Woody would understand her and feel hurt.
Jenna and Lily shared a look, silently deciding that they better not say anything else to Alice, seeing how attached she had already gotten to the Bowtruckle.
When they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, Marlene said the password so they could get to their common room.
"Okay, so we should better get started on our Charms essay tonight," said Lily as they climbed through the portrait hole and into the scarlet room. "Marlene, Jenna, can you please, for the love of God, not leave your homework for the last possible minute? You saw how bad it got last year and it all piled up. This year's even harder because of the extra classes we're t—"
"Oi! You four!" A voice came out of nowhere, startling them.
Lily, Marlene, Alice, and Jenna looked behind them, searching for the source of the voice, but there was no one there, leaving them confused.
"Up here!"
The four girls looked up at the high ceiling of the common room, but they all let out a loud gasp of shock at what they saw. Sirius was dangling in mid-air, upside down.
"Oh, my! What are you doing up there!?" Lily exclaimed, her eyes wide.
"Oh, nothing much. Just relaxing. It's my new way of meditating," said Sirius in a mock-cheery voice.
"Really?" said Marlene, frowning.
"No! I'm being sarcastic! Get me down!" Sirius snapped, red in the face from being dangled in the air for God knows how long. The other students in the common room who were older kept on sniggering.
"Well, how did you get up there? We need know the spell so we can use its counter-curse," said Alice, looking extremely worried.
"We were trying on a new jinx — Levicorpus — that idiot James used it on me and only after getting me up here remembered to tell me that he didn't know the counter-curse! Now could you just do something to get me down!?"
Jenna grinned, crossing her arms. "What's the magic word?"
"If I knew the magic word I wouldn't be stuck up here!" Sirius retorted.
Jenna rolled her eyes at that. "You know what? I think it's good that you're up there. Maybe it will get more blood in your brainless head and then you'll realize how big of a git you are."
"Haha! Very funny!" Sirius yelled. "SOMEBODY HELP!"
"Oh, all right! All right!" Lily shook her head in disappointment before taking out her wand from her robe. She then pointed it up at Sirius, before saying, "Finite!"
"AARGH!" Letting out a shriek, Sirius was thrown on the floor with a loud thud.
Alice rushed forward to help him up as Woody held on to her shoulder with his sharp hands so he wouldn't fall off, watching Sirius curiously.
"Ugh, my head..." Sirius groaned, holding his forehead as he felt like he would collapse from dizziness.
Right at that moment, the common room door opened and James, Remus, and Peter walked inside through the portrait hole, laughing as they spoke.
Although the moment they saw Sirius standing there with murder in his eyes, they came to a halt, their smiled immediately dropping.
"Where — the hell — have you been!?" Sirius snarled through his heavy breaths, still red in the face.
"We went to find a book from the library to help get you down," said Remus, showing him the black-leathered book which he was holding.
"Then what took you so long!?"
"W-well, I had a sudden cookie craving, and when I mentioned it, James said he could really do with some too, so we visited the kitchen on our way here," said Peter nervously, the almost-empty cookie jar still in his hands.
"The kitchen!?" Sirius yelled, all eyes in the common room now watching the scene with amusement. "The kitchen is far away from the library and the Gryffindor common room! I was dangling up here for the past thirty minutes and you're telling me you had a craving!?"
James, Remus, and Peter glanced at each other sideways quietly, before James looked back at Sirius with a scared look, holding up the half-eaten cookie he had in hand. "Cookie?"
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Dropping the cookie on the floor, James, Remus, and Peter shrieked before running out of the common room as Sirius ran after them with his wand in hand.
"Boys." Lily rolled her eyes as the portrait closed behind them.
"Exactly," Jenna and Marlene said at the same time.
***
The next day, the third year Gryffindors had double Potions with Slytherins, which was an utter disaster. They were taught and instructed to make a Shrinking Solution, which couldn't have gone any worse.
At one point, Marlene accidentally added too much root and her Potion exploded in her face. Snape started laughing at her, and so James and Sirius quietly used a spell to knock his cauldron over, causing a green slime to cover his whole table.
Near the end of the class, Woody slipped out of Alice's robe pocket when he saw the shrivelfig on table and wanted to eat some, scaring one of the Slytherin girls and causing her to accidentally knock the big wasp jar over and setting them all free. Mayhem fell upon the classroom, and so Slughorn dismissed the class fifteen minutes earlier than usual.
Thankfully, Herbology and Transfigurations were uneventful and helped them overcome the exhaustion of their morning lesson. Although their last class which was History of Magic tired them again once more.
The only two students who looked as energetic as ever were Sirius and James, ready for the Quidditch tryouts which were being held that day, only an hour away. As it seemed, they had surprisingly made up from their fight last night. Sirius had apparently shown James mercy and spared his life.
By the time Jenna had changed into her Quidditch robe and walked down onto the field with the rest of the old players, James and Sirius were already there along with some others who had come for the tryouts.
"Hello, everyone!" Micheal Collins, who was the new Gryffindor captain, spoke loudly against the harsh autumn wind and the light rain, so everyone could hear him. "As you know, many of our old players graduated Hogwarts last year and so we're two Chasers, one Keeper, and one Beater short! So if you could all just mount your brooms, so we could start!"
As asked, the students who had shown up got on their brooms and shot through the air along with the rest of the original players.
Jenna rolled her eyes when Sirius flew closer to her with a smug grin, swinging his Beater's bat in the air coolly as he held onto his broom handle with his left hand, keeping his balance perfectly.
"Wish me luck, Jenny," Sirius said as he sent a wink at her direction, before flying off at full speed.
Jenna groaned, feeling disappointed to see how good he was actually flying. The results were going to be out tomorrow on who made it to the team, and so Jenna was secretly hoping that he would screw up the tryouts. She wasn't sure if she could tolerate Sirius Black on the team for the next five years.