Semele Perdita

I know it ends at a bad place so forgive me but I thought it was getting a bit long…I’ll post more soon so the plot bunny won’t run away…enjoy

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Semele Perdita

Chapter 9: Talk of Trees and A Few Snarky Comments

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-James-

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On Thursday, I knew I wasn’t alone in the yawning throughout Arithmancy. I kept catching myself from nodding off as Keane droned on about some special rune to mark the order of something that only ancient Greek wizards had used, like I would ever need them in life. Stifling a particularly large yawn with my hand, I glanced around the room with half-lidded eyes. The Hufflepuffs we shared Arithmancy with were mostly in the same state as we were in. A few of the girls sitting in the back of the room were passing a note and one of the boys, I think his name was Andrew, was making a flimsy looking paper airplane. I watched in amusement as Andrew aimed it at Keane’s head jokingly, stopped from throwing it only by the reprimanding hand on his arm that belonged to a rather attractive girl from his house sitting next to him.

I wondered briefly if they were dating, as I tried to remember the girl’s name. Oh well, knowing my luck they probably were dating and if I asked her out the only answer I would get was a slap to the face.

“Now, I would like a six foot paper on the Marking Runes due on Monday,” Keane said in her usual dry voice. Did she even notice that no one cared about her stupid Marking Runes? I sighed, rather loudly, and Keane shot me a look. You know those patented teacher “your-in-trouble” looks? Yeah, I get those almost every day; they’re usually followed by detention, now that I think about it.

Keane went into a few details about the essay, impressing upon us the importance of these runes and their complexity. I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair, balancing it up on the back to legs.

“Mr. Potter!” Keane’s panicked yell interrupted my drifting thoughts. “How many times have I told you not to lean back in your chair?” The last part of the question came out as more of a long-suffering sigh than a demand.

“Sorry, Professor,” I replied with a disarming smile. The smile usually got me out of trouble. At least, serious trouble, I haven’t counted detentions as serious since I met Sirius.

“No matter how much you grin about it, you will still receive detention and ten points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter, for not paying attention…yet again. Why can’t you just sit there and look like you’re paying attention once in a while, so I don’t go completely crazy?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Very well,” she sighed. “Class dismissed. Potter, come here, let’s discuss this matter, shall we?” Keane waved her hand dismissively towards the class and everyone scrambled with their bags as if they couldn’t get out of the classroom fast enough. It’s not like the Grim was chasing them for Merlin’s sake…though that could be arranged. It wouldn’t be the real Grim, but if they were running they wouldn’t really be able to tell would they?

It was with these thoughts in mind that I approached Keane’s desk. Keane was still rather young, possibly only just thirty. She had only just started teaching at Hogwarts last year, replacing that old frump Lamont. Her presence had been welcomed in the Arithmancy classroom, as everyone hated Lamont.

Of course, over time I think all students hate their professors, especially in sixth and seventh year. They seem to be very fond of applying the “more homework you have, the better you’ll do” theory on us. My theory on this is strictly “the more homework we have, the more of us will contemplate suicide before the NEWTs even come.” All the professors who had heard this disagreed profusely. Although the Divination professor had gone rather pale, too bad, I wasn’t in Divination.

I sat in my chair, unconcerned, what could Keane do that was so horrible? All I had done was yawn in the middle of her stupid lecture, grounds for a detention at most.

“Mr. Potter,” Keane sighed, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. “Can you please inform me what I am doing wrong?” she asked after a moment of silence.

“Er—what?” I responded, caught off guard. I definitely had not been expecting this.

“I’ve tried everything with you, lectures don’t work, you could care less about detentions, and you barely give a shrug of the shoulders when I dock points. Please tell me: what more can I do? You seem indifferent to any kind of punishment I hand over to you.” Keane sighed again and began to pace the length of the classroom. My eyes followed her figure questioningly. I wasn’t sure I liked where this conversation was going.

“Well—er—I don’t know…I guess it just doesn’t effect me anymore, it’s happened so much.” I ran my hand through my hair nervously, fidgeting with the strap of my bag. I really couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.

Keane looked up from her pacing and stopped. After staring at me disbelievingly for a moment she waved a dismissing hand at me. Thank Merlin I could leave. I forced myself to walk calmly to the door of the classroom.

Just as I was walking through the doorjamb, Keane yelled sharply, “Potter!”

I turned around, barely stopping myself from sighing with exasperation. “Yes, Professor?” I asked in a controlled voice.

In addition to the ten points already docked, I’m adding another five for good measure. Also, you will have a week of detention for not following rules and another three days for disrespect. Understand?” Keane said briskly. I nodded dumbly, a week and three days? For tilting a chair, even I had to admit, that was a bit extreme. But it was nice to know Keane was growing a backbone. I turned with another nod and walked out the door. “Oh and Potter?” She called be back again. “Tuck in your shirt or I’ll take another five points. You know the uniform regulations.”

This time, I didn’t restrain the frustrated sigh from sounding. If she called me back one more time, I wouldn’t hesitate to run. And run fast and far away. Luckily, there were no more shouts of “Potter!” calling me back to the classroom.

I hurried down the deserted corridors down to the Great Hall, certain I was late for supper. What a tragedy that would be, Sirius and peter might eat all the potatoes. They were my favorite, especially here at Hogwarts. They always eat all the potatoes if I don’t get there at least five minutes after supper started. Oh well, I feel a late night kitchen rendezvous coming about. Of course…. it would have to be after detention, unless I can somehow sneak out. Doubtful, but it could be done. It all hinged on who I had to serve the detention with, concerning both teacher and student that I ended up with.

After I finally reached the Great Hall, barely, I might add, as Filch’s damn cat was right behind me the whole time, I headed straight for where my friends were seated. They were all stuffing their faces equally well and to my disappointment Sirius’ plate was piled high with potatoes.

The second I sat down, Sirius looked up and swallowed whatever he had currently shoved into his mouth. “Hey, Prongs, owl came for us,” he said after a moment. “Detention’s at 7o’clock sharp tonight. You get Filch.”

I groaned. Filch hated me, he usually made me scrub something incredibly filthy. Without magic, it took hours. Good thing I had a free period tomorrow morning.

“Who’d you end up with?” I asked him. He was smirking me; he must have ended up with a pushover.

“Kettleburn.” Sirius’s smirk widened as I felt my eyes narrow. Lucky one, Sirius was. Everyone knew the worst punishment Kettleburn had ever come up with was trimming the edge of the . Pitiful.

“Lucky,” I muttered mutinously. I might have to denounce Sirius as my best mate if this luck continued. After all, I had to look out for myself.

“Cheer up, mate, at least you’ll get to hack off Filch…I saw him earlier today, the bloke didn’t look too happy himself, should be easy to get a rise out of him tonight. Of course maybe not, I heard that that Evans girl from Ravenclaw, you know the one you liked a bit last year? She has detention tonight for ripping up Laila Geer’s face and Kettleburn and Filch are the only ones who ever do detention duty. Anyways, Filch likes taking the newbies.” Sirius’s face scrunched up in thought. “Except you. You get stuck with him ‘cause Kettleburn is scared of you and me together in detention and he figures I make less damage to the trees.”

Remus who had been watching the whole conversation with an amused expression let out a snort at that comment.

“We’ll never forget that day will we now, James?” he asked with an innocent quality to his voice.

“Shut up, Moony,” I glared at him.

“Oh, yes, the Trees were quite traumatized after that. I do believe I saw them shrink back a bit the other day when we were walking out there and you were playing with that snitch of yours, Prongs,” Peter quipped, joining in with the teasing. All three of them were grinning, obviously enjoying my discomfort.

It had happened in fourth year, our first year of Care of Magical Creatures the class that Kettleburn taught. We had been gathering a flower called Melantha from the some trees in a grove a little way into the . The trees, according to Kettleburn, had been gifts from a Greek wizarding school several hundred years ago. The flowers they produced were used in sleeping draughts and calming potions.

Anyways, I had been trying to finish a Transfiguration essay that was due in my next class and as I finished I was casting the drying spell over the ink and someone accidentally ran into me and my wand flew out of my hand right as I said the spell. Well, my wand wasn’t harmed but the tree directly in front of me caught the blast of the ink-drying spell and began to shrivel up horribly. Then to make matters worse, my wand, which had been unharmed up to this point, was snapped in two when a stupid Slytherin stepped on it. The now broken wand started shooting random spells in all directed and everyone was forced to take cover until Kettleburn said a Freezing Charm over the wand.

Needless to say, most of the trees in the area had been caught with some kind of odd spell and were all in different states of distortion. One tree had been unlucky enough to catch a coloring charm and had turned bright pink. Another was singing, “God Save The Queen,” in a shrill, off-pitch voice. Another tree, to the left of my hiding spot was reciting the different ways to levitate something, a charm I had invented to help me with a particularly hard exam for Charms in third year.

“Whose wand is this?” Kettleburn had demanded angrily. Well, as angrily as he could, the man wasn’t that bold especially when it came to teenagers. Good Merlin, he was terrified of us most of the time. You’d think he expected us to whip out our wands and hex him at any given moment. Of course, a lot of us thought about doing it but none of us actually did it. It would get us expelled if we did anyways.

Snape, that git, yelled that it was mine. I could have cursed him when Kettleburn gave me a month of detention with Filch. From that day on Kettleburn began to shirk away from my presence and became very protective of his trees. Needless to say, he has never let me back into his class since then either. Developed a rather strong dislike for me, he did. And that is why there was a big fit of snickering in my year whenever someone mentions trees. It’s a very sore spot for me too. Honestly, it wasn’t my fault my old wand was slightly demented and shot spells at the trees. I didn’t tell it to. Anyways, it was really all the Slytherin who ran into me fault that it happened. Everything would have been fine if they hadn’t.

Did I mention that my paper got hit with the Ignito Spell? Therefore, it went up in flames along with my Transfiguration grade that day. All in all, my fourth year was not a happy one.

Once dinner was over, we headed back to the common room. Thankfully, they had gotten over their bout about the tree thing. Hopefully, no one would bring it up again.

“Game of chess before you leave, Prongs?” Peter offered.

“Sure, I guess.” I shrugged.

We sat down at a table in the back of the common room, which already had a chess table on it. Chess was quite popular in Gryffindor, so McGonagall had consented to let us have boards that simply belonged to the whole house. It was quite useful when you couldn’t find your own board, but sometimes the pieces tended to be a bit temperamental. That or they chose favorites, and I was never a favorite. Besides that, I wasn’t very good at chess in the first place. Oh sure, I knew all the moves to win but I could never concentrate long enough to actually think the game through. Remus said my short attention span when it came to things like planning and foresight was a real character flaw of mine. I have a hunch he might be right. That might be why I’m always in trouble too, come to think of it.

“So what’s up in your life, mate?” I asked Peter after he took my first rook. I leaned back in my chair as I watched the piece being dragged off the table.

“Eh, nothing much. No girls, no drama, no new pranks. Say, when are we doing a new prank, I think we’re overdue for some excitement around here,” Peter said musingly as he inched a rook to the far left of the board forward.

“Who knows? Inspiration for pranks has been running quite low on the register lately, Wormtail. Disappointing, really, but can’t really do much. I’m sure something will come up soon.” I suddenly remembered that Remus had had an idea for one shortly after school started. Note to self: ask Remus next time you catch him alone about the cups. And pray he remembers whatever he had wanted to do.

I kept that to myself though, I think Remus and I were due for a little excitement away from Sirius and Peter. Anyways, no matter how friendly Remus was acting around Sirius, there was still some animosity there.

“Maybe,” Peter answered me, breaking me out of my thoughts.

After about a quarter of the hour, Peter had announced, “Checkmate!” rather triumphantly. Nothing new, he always beat me. As I said, I was quite horrible at chess. I sighed, leaning back in my chair again and ran my hand through my already messy hair.

“Right, then, time for me to leave, if I’m late, Filch’ll have my head.” I stood, giving people a small smile.

“Bad luck, Prongs, that you got Filch again. Wonder what he’ll make you scrub tonight.”

“I don’t even want to know. Although, it can’t be anything I haven’t done recently. I mean, I think I’ve scrubbed almost every inch of this blasted castle.” I shrugged, personally still dreading what Filch had thought up this time.

I walked out of the portrait hole after bidding peter goodbye, as both Remus and Sirius were nowhere to be found. Remus was probably sleeping or studying and Sirius had most likely already headed down to his own detention or gone to do something else. I was much to lazy to hunt either one of them down anyways.

When I reached Filch’s office, I saw Evans standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. This was probably her first detention, by the way she was acting.

As I came closer, I noticed Filch hadn’t arrived yet and relaxed my posture a bit.

“Hey, Evans, first time?” I raised an eyebrow at the girl. She was really quite pretty, but most boys in our year didn’t really care about her, seeing how she never accepted any offers and was rather snappish. But that didn’t stop us from asking.

“What’s it to you?” She said after a minute. She looked quite put off about something. I wonder what happened?

“Nothing really? It’s just don’t usually see girls like you in detention, Evans.”

“Girls like me?”

“Yeah, you know, Prefect, Ravenclaw, teacher’s pet…you don’t see your type around here often. But I heard you’re here because of a noble cause. I have to tell you, I don’t much like Geer either.”

“Er—was that more of a compliment or an insult?” she asked, rubbing her neck, but smiling nonetheless.

“You could take it either way.” I grinned at her.

“Well, well, well, my two victims are right on time,” Filch’s sneering voice startled both of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lily shrink back a bit. I smiled a bit, but quickly wiped all traces of laughter off my face. Filch really hated laughter unless it was of his own accord.

“Filch, you’re looking grand tonight,” I jibed. I saw Filch’s sneer twist in disgust at the sight of me. You would think I was some piece of particularly nasty garbage the way he looked at me about that moment.

“Just for that, Potter, tonight is going to be miserable...for both of you”

Behind me, I heard an exasperated sigh from Evans.

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ahhhhhhhh, don’t kill me, I’m too young and pretty to die anyways. Okay sorry for the incredibly bad ending spot and the whole thing about trees…half of it might only be funny to me and a few other people, so sorry but the idea just grabbed my brain and wouldn’t let go so…hehe, but it was rather funny wasn’t it, I couldn’t stop laughing when I was writing this chapter and I probably won’t be able to stop random outbursts of laughter next chapter either. Oh well, the price I pay.

avid reader – well….what Sirius did is actually the Snape Incident, if you will recall in the third book(PoA) Dumbledore mentions it…it will play only a minor part in the story though, as it happened in 5^th year and I’m concentrating on the future, but if you can’t remember it will all be explained in a few chapters from now…maybe…who knows…I don’t all I know is how the story is supposed to go not how it actually does…anyways thanks for reviewing ;-)

hpfanmelissa – thank you anyways for telling me not too, I’m not much for grammar or anything like that, I hate the particulars about writing, people make it so complicated when all I want to do is write…hum note to self: this may be why English paper marking are at times low….haha, thanks for reviewing as always and I hope this chapter was okay.

nom de plume – thanks lots, I love putting in little details of characters it makes them more lifelike. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Anonymous – thank you for reading it, I usually write in third person but I just got an urge to write in first person or this story, it makes it much more personal and tells this story better

lady in black – wow I’m racking in the compliments on detail this time. I hope this was long enough for you, next chaoter will probably be long too, lots of ground to cover, I haven’t decided if it should be in lily or james view yet, depends on my source of inspiration

mercedes1327 – thank you, if the character didn’t explain it and it just pops up randomly that would be rather awkward no? lol thanks for reviewing I look forward to hearing from you again.

sweetkiwi456 – well, there will be lots of lily in the next chapter, don’t worry, anyways thanks for reviewing it means a lot to me and I hope to hear from you againJ

Il Duce – ahh, the world of l/j shippers revolves around those fics doesn’t it, lol… I like being unique *winks* its fun. I reviewed your story, its great I can’t believe more people haven’t read it! I actually enjoyed writing that scene where Laila gets “clawed” I was reminded of a time where I wanted to do the same thing *innocent look*

Eschiva – haha, you can be a tree too, holly! Do you want to be a tree? And you can change the font with the little drop-down menu thingy at the top of the page…

draco’s gurl – well…sappy love scenes might not come for quite some time but there are going to be some l/j moments soon enough thanks for reviewing!

Update – I love the name, jk, lol, I will write a full transformation scene sometime, I think it’d be fun but you don’t get to find out what happens this full moon I’m afraid, thanks for reviewing!

And to everyone else: anonymous, greeneyes101, shortcake thanks bunches for reviewing!

Hope to see everyone’s name again and a few new ones.

*hint, hint* I might update faster if a lot of people reviewed even more than this time, because reviews make me happy, even if they say “your story sucks” because that means someone read what I wrote even if it was bad and took sometime to tell me that….carry on then and don’t forget my new rule: no reviews no chapter. *wink wink, nudge nudge hint hint*