"Well done James," Harry congratulated his student as the boy left the front of the class, shaking but triumphant. Lily smiled at him as he passed, and he returned the smile in a slight daze. This had to be one of the best moments of his life. He'd fought off the Imperius curse for the first time, and Lily had smiled at him! Life didn't get much better than this!
"Now, the Imperius curse is a very difficult curse to fight," Harry informed his class, as they watched him in respectful silence, "But I'm going to try and help you learn to resist it, at least to some extent. Now, do I have any volunteers?"
No one seemed particularly willing, but after a second's pause, Lily Evans raised her hand.
"Lily? Well done, come on up."
Slowly, taking her time, she walked to the front, and turned to face Harry.
"Ready?"
Lily nodded. Harry gave her a half apologetic smile and raised his wand.
"Imperio!"
All at once, every crevice of her mind sank into blissful drowsiness, almost trance like. Far away, a voice crooned softly,
"Go back to your desk."
That's odd; Lily thought woozily, I could have sworn Professor Potter wanted me to do something.
"Go back to your desk!"
No thanks, I'll wait and see what my teacher wants...
"GO BACK TO YOUR DESK!"
No, really, I...
"GO BACK YO YOUR DESK, YOU STUPID GIRL!"
I WON'T!
All at once, the room came back into focus. Lily stared around, confused,
"Sorry Professor, didn't you want me to do something?"
Harry stared at her steadily, "Lily, you just threw off the Imperius curse on your first try."
Lily didn't say anything, wondering why her teacher seemed to think she'd thrown off the Imperius curse. And why was everyone staring at her? She blinked.
"Sorry, sir?"
"You just threw off the Imperius," Harry repeated.
Lily giggled. "No I didn't, Sir."
Harry's eyes bored right into her. "Did you just feel like you didn't have a care in the world?"
Lily nodded, a little disconcerted,
"And was a voice telling you to go back to your seat?"
"Yes."
"And your own voice, the voice that said you didn't want to, was louder?"
"Yep."
"Then you just threw off the Imperius curse." He smiled at her, "D'you believe me now?"
Lily nodded wordlessly, and walked in a daze back to her desk. Whispers broke out around her, only to be silenced by one glance from Professor Potter. She slid in next to Alice, as Ginny stood up and flicked her wand at the board. A tightly wadded note landed on Lily's desk. She unfolded it, and recognized James Potter's neat, round handwriting.
Way to go, Evans!
She turned around and flashed James a quick smile, before turning to face Ginny. The assistant teacher's face was serious.
"Listen up. This class is incredibly important right now so you need to all PAY ATTENTION! You'll be needing to use your skills sooner than you think so you'll all need to practice CONSTANT VILIGANCE!"
No cheerful banter, no wisecracks, no stories. This Ginny knew what she was doing, and she was going to do it. Anyone who got in her way would get a swift and painful kick where it hurt.
Harry was watching her, a little smile on his face, a she unrolled the map and pinned it to the board, asking briskly if anyone knew how to defend a castle. Some of the suggestions for a strategy the students came up with were almost laughable, but some gave Harry a few good ideas for his defence strategy.
"Homework!" Ginny snapped, "Devise a strategy of defence for this castle assuming you have approximately 300 wands defending versus 500, with a thousand that need protecting. Go."
The class scrambled away hastily, as Harry walked up to the woman by the desk.
"Don't be strict or anything, Gin."
Ginny gave him a half smile. "Yeah, well, I want them to stay alive."
Harry nodded, his eyes tired, "As do I, Gin. But please be a bit gentler with my firstie, or the front two rows might wet themselves.
_._._._._._._
Lily was curled up in the Heads Common room a muggle book open on her lap. She looked up as James came in from Quidditch practice, looking tired.
"How'd it go?"
James shrugged,
"Alright, but we're playing Ravenclaw next week, and they're really good. People are distracted, what with the war and everything. S'pose, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter that much."
Lily goggled. James Potter, he who lived for Quidditch, saying that a game didn't matter that much?
James noticed her staring and said, rather coolly, "I do know there're more important things than Quidditch, you know."
Lily blushed and looked at her feet, realizing that she'd put James down as a Quidditch maniac who cared for nothing but the game. She could feel that James was watching her closely, and for some reason, she felt herself blush further.
"Sorry. I'll just..."
Cursing her red hair, she left the room, leaving a somewhat surprised Head Boy behind her.
_._._._._._._
It was almost the Christmas holidays, and neither Harry nor Ginny had slacked off at all. Even at the first Quidditch match of the season, they'd both brought a hefty stack of books along with them. Their almost maniacal working had made the Marauders and their allies all the more determined to get the two of them together, but it simply wasn't working. They were either too wrapped up in their research, or just plain thick skinned. They'd even given up flirting, rendering their classes far less entertaining.
The day before the Christmas holidays was when they both finally cracked. Staggering down to breakfast after half an hour's sleep, the two teachers had almost collapsed into the scrambled eggs. When Flitwick had asked Ginny kindly if she was all right, the red head had burst into tears and whacked the diminutive professor on the head. Harry had meekly looked on, suggesting timidly that she wasn't completely in the right, and she'd slapped him, called him an insufferable berk and marched out of the Great Hall. Harry had stayed completely still, and then began to giggle hysterically. He seemed to find Dumbledore's beard, a fork and something Ciad had said all endlessly amusing, and after a few minutes he too had to be taken out.
With two hysterical professors loose in the school, the Christmas holidays were on the up, and Remus was concocting fresh matchmaking schemes, aided by his friends and allies. Lily's idea of roping them into some kind of dare game had been received warmly, and a fully-fledged plan of action had been drawn up.
_._._._._._._
Five days before Christmas, Harry and Ginny opened the door to the Room of Requirement to practice, only to find the Marauders sitting in a circle with Lily and her friends, chatting and laughing animatedly. They were all very good actors.
"Oh – hi, Professors!" said Lily, with just the right amount of surprise and embarrassment. Sirius gave them a well-rehearsed 'sheepish smile' and said, "We were just playing Truth or Dare. Care to join us?"
The two teachers exchanged silent glances, and after a second, joined the circle.
"We were never here, all right?"
James nodded vigorously. He couldn't help feeling he might enjoy this game for its merits worth, even though dirt on the teachers would be a good thing.
"Truth potion?" asked Remus, offering the small bottle to them, "Don't worry," he added, seeing their wary faces, "It's not very strong. You don't have to answer; you can just do the dare. But if you do answer, you have to tell the truth."
Harry let himself grin for the first time in ages and took a swig of the potion.
"Let's live dangerously," he said, passing the bottle to Ginny.
"We do that anyway," Ginny pointed out, knocking back the potion and setting it back in the centre of the circle, "Don't see why we need to play Truth or Dare with a bunch of our students to brighten up our lives. Although," she added, after a moment's thought, "It is nice to take a break from our knitting and complaining about the price of potatoes to anyone who'll listen."
"Quite, m'dear," Harry agreed, "And anyway, living dangerously is completely different when you're doing it by choice."
"I do agree. Now, who's starting?"
"I am," replied Sirius promptly, "And I choose as my first victim... Miss Wea – uh, Ginny."
The petite redhead pretended to cower behind Harry, who in due course ignored her and winked at Sirius with a "Give her hell for me, OK?"
Sirius gave Ginny a charming smile before saying briskly "Are you single?"
Ginny didn't blush, as he'd hoped, but rather batted her eyelids and said flirtatiously, "Why're you asking, Siri?"
Sirius had the grace to blush a little, but she continued, "Yeah, I am. At the moment."
She noted that all of her students looked rather disappointed, which further added to her conviction that they were trying to set her up with Harry, and she couldn't help but laugh a little. Having answered the question, it was her turn, and she chose to target Lily, asking her if her opinion of James had changed at all since the beginning of the year. Blushing a little, the girl answered that yes, it had, which seemed to satisfy both teachers, not to mention James, immensely. Lily in turn asked Sirius if he was really as camp as he acted. After roars of laughter from the Marauders, Sirius said know, leaving Remus to explain that it was all an act. James insisted he did it because he was so in love with himself, whereas Sirius merely waggled his eyebrows and said that if he let it out that he was both straight and single he'd 'Have to employ security trolls to beat the ladies off me.' Remus and James merely snorted. Sirius then asked Alice if she fancied Frank, to which the mousy haired girl went bright red and mumbled something that sounded uncannily like 'Yeahbutpleasedon'tellanyone.' Lily and Marnie both looked delighted at this information and teased her mercilessly for the rest of the evening. To get her own back, Alice asked Marnie if she had a crush on Harry, earning a rather alarming blood rush to Marine's face, and a squeak of 'Yes!' This caused Harry to choke violently and Ginny had to bang him on the back, (perhaps harder than necessary, but as she explained as he recovered, he was completely used to it. Marnie then took rather vicious delight in asking Harry if he fancied anyone. Harry replied promptly that even if he did, he wasn't going to tell his students, and he'd do the Dare. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, Marnie ordered him to kiss Ginny.
If the students had expected him to blush and ramble, they were disappointed. Without hesitation, he grabbed Ginny's face, pulled her towards him and gave her a quick, five-second kiss. As the students whooped and cheered, Ginny pulled her head away, and after a pause, remarked, "Eight out of ten, Harry."
Harry grinned and gave a mock bow, seemingly completely at ease, as was Ginny, sadly.
Harry in turn dared Remus to perform 'Dancing Queen' and transfigured his jeans and jumper into a lilac crocheted bikini, cuing a loud guffaw from Sirius and an appreciative whoop from Ginny. The game got far more interesting at that point, as the questions got more outrageous, and the Dares more frequent. Ginny got asked if she'd ever broken up with someone, and if so, why, which evolved into a long story of what exactly her brothers had done when they'd got hold of Dean Thomas. Harry snickered rather loudly at this, causing Ginny to ask him pointedly if he'd ever kissed someone under the mistletoe, which forced him to recount the Cho Chang/nargle episode. The Marauders seemed to find the 'nargles' especially hilarious. The 'Truths' that were directed at Harry and Ginny failed to bring up any real dirt, but always triggered a funny story. They seemed to be masters of not giving away any of their personal feelings, and not even Remus could tell how they felt about their kiss.
The game ended when Harry point-blank refused to kiss Lily as he was dared to. Although no one seemed to mind that much, James in particular, Ginny noted that it was nearly two in the morning, and they needed to go to bed.
As they headed back to their quarters, Ginny commented, "That was so fun, wasn't it? I mean, messing with their heads like that." And not worry about the war she silently added.
"I think we should make a habit of it."
"What, playing Truth or Dare?"
"No, idiot, messing with their heads."
"Oh, I quite agree."
The two Defence against the Dark Arts teachers walked down the darkened corridor together, cackling.
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