Next morning, the three boys trooped down to the Great Hall for breakfast before their first class, though it had taken some work to rouse Remus from his sleep. Peter, who had still been snoring, too, they left behind, figuring he would wake up whenever he wanted to. It took them even longer to find the Great Hall without having Bilius Weasley to show them the way through the castle and they got lost down several long corridors, including the one with the big stone gargoyle, before they finally found their way to the Great Hall. James noticed Lily Evans was already at the Gryffindor table, sitting with a bunch of second years and talking, her face bright and much happier than she'd looked the night before. She looked up as they walked by and James said, "Morning." She rolled her eyes at him and turned back to the other girls.
Taking their seats at the table, Sirius tugged some waffles onto his plate while James mixed up an assortment of cereals, Remus pulled a thick slice of ham onto his plate eagerly and slurped up a mug of hot coffee. The boys ate in silence as the Hall around them was getting steadily louder and louder as students filed down from the dormitories. Bilius Weasley came in when they were nearly done, followed by Peter Pettigrew, and sat next to Remus, who was opposite James and Sirius this morning, and slapped him on the back jovially, making him nearly drop his coffee mug. "How was your first night, then?" Bilius asked. "I was surprised you were all up so early, I stopped by your dormitory on the way down to see if you wanted a hand in finding your way. Good thing I did, too, Peter was still asleep. Would've missed his first class," he laughed.
Peter was red in the face and quickly snatched a wild assortment of foods as though he were scavenging and started eating quickly.
"We didn't wanna wake you up, mate," James explained.
"You were snoring like a dragon," Sirius added, "All night I kept dreaming I was coming up on a dragon guarding his gold!"
Peter went even redder, but didn't reply.
Suddenly overhead there was a call of an owl and the boys looked up at the ceiling suddenly flooded with owls, flying around the Great Hall, dropping off their parcels and letters to the students. Bubo flew down with a letter for James and took a piece of toast as payment before flying away. Sirius kept staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the family owl, Dolf, to come through the window, but he didn't come. Sirius's eyebrows stitched together. "Mother didn't write me," he said, concerned. "She must not have heard about me being sorted Gryffindor, then."
"Don't tell me you're disappointed for not getting a howler?" James said beside him, ripping open his letter.
"Well... no," Sirius replied. Though really he sort of was, odd as it was to be sad about such a thing. Honestly his mother had been rather distant with him ever since the whole muggle-watching incident and he'd sort of hoped for some attention - even if it was negative. But he supposed that it wasn't as though he'd written her and told her about the sorting. How would she know? But as though in answer to the question, he felt someone standing behind him and turned around.
Lucius Malfoy said, "So what went wrong, Sirius?" he asked. Beside him stood two others that Sirius knew from various family functions - Alistor Mulciber and Germaine Avery. They were rather large guys.
"What?" Sirius asked, intimidated by the three of them hovering so close and ominously.
"You're a Black, you should've been in Slytherin. So what's wrong with you?" Mulciber demanded roughly.
"Nothing's wrong with me," Sirius answered. "I just got sorted different is all."
Lucius's voice was cold and low, "Is it true that you're a blood traitor?" he asked.
Sirius didn't know how to answer.
Lucius leaned closer, putting his hand on the table between Sirius and James. James looked at the back of his head, affronted by his butting in. "I heard you interacted with a muggle over summer. On purpose. Wanted to make friends with the filthy thing. And now..." his eyes traversed across the table to Remus and Bilius. "...now you're making friends with half-bloods and other blood traitors."
"Why don't you shove off, Malfoy?" Bilius declared, standing up.
Lucius looked at Bilius, stood upright, and meaningfully polished the badge on his chest. "Five points from Gryffindor for your attitude, Weasley. And why don't we make it one more for the abysmal state of your hair?"
Bilius raised an eyebrow, "Always got to be a prat, don't you?" he asked. "I'm a prefect, stupid, you can't take points away from me."
"Then make it a point for his hair then," Lucius said, indicating James's messy head. He turned to Sirius again. "I'll be writing your parents."
"Fine," Sirius replied. "Send them love from me, will you?"
Lucius turned and stormed off to the Slytherin table, followed by Mulciber and Avery.
Bilius rolled his eyes, "He's in his seventh year and good riddance to him." He turned back to his meal.
James looked at Sirius, "So that was one of your cousins, 'ey?"
Sirius nodded, taking entirely too long to cut one of his waffles in the attempt to avoid eye contact with his friends. He was trying very hard not to cry from sheer anger. "Lucius Malfoy," he nodded. "Guy's a complete arse. His mum and dad are rich as bloody hell, even richer than Mother and Father are, I expect, though I don't really know to be honest. But the Malfoys, they like reminding everyone how rich they are. They have a flock of enchanted peacocks prancing about their yard and they own a huge house with more rooms than any family could ever need."
Bilius chimed in, "One of the biggest prats in the school. Loves bullying anyone he can. I can't believe he got Head Boy. It's a disgrace to the prefect system, that is." He glowered at his breakfast. "I've got to figure out some way to get back at him before he's gone." Bilius rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"Maybe next time you set off Filibusters you should set him on fire," James suggested.
Remus, who'd stayed silent throughout the entire encounter, announced, "We better get to class, guys, or we're going to be late."
"Know where you're going?" Bilius asked. When they shook their heads, he said, "Go up the stairs out here, 'round to the left, up the staircase at the end to the third floor, take the left off the stairwell... It's the third door on the second corridor to the left."
"Blimey." James said. He shoveled a couple more bites of cereal into his mouth and grabbed his bookbag, "Let's go guys so we have time to find it if we get lost. Thanks Bilius."
"No problem," Bilius answered.
The boys said goodbye to Bilius and started off out of the Great Hall, headed for the Charms classroom by Bilius's instructions. Peter Pettigrew rushed after them, slightly out of breath, and a couple feet behind. They reached the classroom without too much trouble, only having turned right once when they should've taken a left, and found Lily Evans had come up before they had and was now sitting on the carpet, leaning against the legs of a suit of armor and reading her charms book intently, her hair falling in a red curtain.
When it was nearly time for class to start, the door flew open, seemingly of it's own accord, and a voice called from within, "Come in students, come in!" They filed in. The desks had been arranged into one long table in front of Flitwick's teacher's desk. They sat along it, Lily leaving an extra seat between herself and Sirius. She still had her book open to the page she'd been on and Sirius noticed she was more than halfway through reading the book already. He'd barely even cracked the cover on his. He nudged James and pointed at Lily's book and mouthed 'read it nearly through already!' and James raised an eyebrow.
"Welcome, welcome," Professor Flitwick said, beaming around at all of them. "My, my, but you are a small group of first years, aren't you? Smallest of the four houses, I imagine. That's okay, it just means we'll have more time for one-on-one and you'll all become quite brilliant in no time, I'm sure." He looked down at his own copy of the text book on his desk, "Now can any of you tell me what a charm is?"
Lily's hand went up.
"Miss Evans... my, my, the only girl. Do you like your dormitory?" he asked, smiling.
"It's alright," Lily answered. "I'm not used to having my own room. Back home my twin, Tuney, and I shared so..."
"She's a twin?" hissed James to Sirius.
Sirius shrugged, "Where's the other one?"
"Kindly pay attention," Flitwick commanded. "A drawback, for you, of a small class is I shall notice everything you're doing of an... extra curricular... nature." He chuckled, then turned back to LIly. "So, Miss. Evans, tell us, what is a charm?"
"A charm is a spell that alters the properties of a given object - it changes what the object does, not what it is. Being under a charm is called being bewitched, and a dark charm can be called a curse, a hex, or a jinx, depending on the properties of the charm." She sounded like an audio recording of the book.
Sirius snorted.
"Troubles, Mr. Black?" Flitwick asked.
"Got a bug in my throat," Sirius lied.
Lily scowled at him.
"Very well," Flitwick answered. "And quite right, Miss. Evans. Charms are very useful and make up more than half of the magic that you will do in your lifetime. Because they are such basic magic, many people wrongly assume that they are easy, but be careful for a clumsily cast charm can backfire and you'll end up with whatever spell you've cast placed upon yourself. I've heard of witches and wizards who have gone mad from botched memory charms or who have ended up suspended by their ankles in their rooms unable to get down until the charm wears off for they cannot reach their wand."
"Sounds fun," snickered James to Sirius.
"Levi corpus!" Flitwick waved his wand without warning and James was suddenly swept out of his chair and suspended over the desks by his Gryffindor trainers, his robes bunched 'round his armpits, revealing his muggle clothes beneath them. The others looked up from their seats and laughed as James's hair hung on end and his spectacles went lopsided from gravity. James laughed, too, and Flitwick righted him and gently lowered him back down to his seat.
"That was brilliant!" James declared, laughing, "Levi corpus, huh? I'll remember that one." He scribbled it down on the title page of his book.
"Well, first you best learn how to cast it before you go flipping that wand of yours about." Professor Flitwick swished his wand again and a feather flew to each of their desks. "Today, we shall begin with a much more simple variation of the levitation charm... wingardium leviosa. Remember, pronunciation of a charm is very important. You do not want to say it the wrong way or things could go seriously wrong!"
They sat for the next hour all shouting at their feathers and waving their wands, trying to get them to levitate. By the end of the class, only Lily and Peter had succeeded. The other three were told to work on it for homework and the class was dismissed.
"That wasn't a bad first class," Remus reviewed as they walked into the hallway, following instructions Professor Flitwick had given them to Transfiguration.
"Not bad at all," James agreed.
"Especially the part when he had you hanging from the ceiling," laughed Sirius.
"I can't wait to learn that one," James said. "You best watch out, I'll be stringing up any gits that annoy me, and that means you, Sirius." The boys began shoving each other playfully as they walked along, laughing loudly.
Ahead of them, listening as they rough housed behind her, Lily rolled her eyes.