Chapter 3- Idiotic Keenness Effects Amour
That same evening James went down to the Hosptal Wing so that Madame Pomfrey could heal his broken nose and toe. Doing her nusely duty, she inquired as to how James had received his injuries. This line of questioning led to James lying and saying that he had a scrap with Sirius.
"Well, I'll just have to have a talk with Minerva about that boy," Madame Pomfrey huffed as she went about tending to his wounds. As she worked, James couldn't help but over hear her muttering scornfully things like, "foolish boys" and "behaving just like muggle scoundrels" or "completely backwards."
"I can hear that!" James complained. Madame Pomfrey raised her eyebrow as she gave James a disapproving glare that clearly told him to keep his trap shut.
"I'm just stating the truth," Madame Pomfrey rebuked him before she then said that he was allowed to go. But he still had to wear butterfly bandages over the bridge of his nose which complimented the two black eyes that were quickly developing.
"Well, at least the bandages are flesh toned, but those two black eyes really complement your hazel eyes, Prongs my boy!" Sirius smirked.
"Yeah, laugh it up now while you still can, Padfoot! I told Poppy you hit me and she ran off to tell Minnie!" James retorted as he stuck his tongue out at his best mate.
"Prongs, please don't call her Minnie!" wheezed Moony. "She's our professor for one. And for two, it's just plain creepy. Every time you call her that, I feel like my skin is crawling or bristling."
"How does that work?" Padfoot inquired innocently before adding, "Oh yes. The wolf inside of you. Tell me, does your fur tickle you when you swallow?"
Remus glanced at him in blatant disbelief and shock, "Please, tell me. Did you walk off with an extra opium sphere in your bag in Divination? Or did you nick some belladonna in Potions? Because you, dear Padfoot, are seriously tripping."
"What makes you say that?" Sirius grumbled while glaring at his friend
"You seem to me a little mad lately," Remus explained, "and I mean a lot more than usual."
"Well," Sirius huffed, "I'm sure you have plenty of first hand experience when it comes to being completely off your rocker."
"That is not my fault," Remus said acidly, "I don't have any control that one time a month, but you have full awareness of yourself right now. At least I should hope so."
"Maybe it's because of the cookies Andromeda sent me. They did taste a little strange, but after you ate one or two you feel so light- hearted…" grinned Sirius. Remus rolled his eyes in disbelief.
"Sure, go ahead and use your cousin as a scapegoat for your natural lack of sanity," hissed Moony.
"Hey, everyone look! It's Moaning Moony," Sirius brooded. "I bet you're related to Moaning Myrtle, confess it!"
"Oh, I will give you Moaning Moony it you don't shut it!" Remus said rolling up one shirt sleeve and pulling out his wand.
"Oh I'm shaking in my robes. Why don't you just bite me," Padfoot provoked, "You know you want to."
"You better watch your ass in the forest next month!" Remus snarled, "I just may!" Sirius let out a low growl from the back of his throat.
"Not again!" James hollered, "You two behave now! And for the love of Merlin, stop fighting!"
"Minnie. That sounds like the name of a cat," Peter thought loudly and the other three boys snapped back to reality. Sirius looked at Wormtail with a furrowed brown and his eyebrows almost touched each other.
"Sometimes I ask myself how we became mates," he pondered. Peter just shrugged nonchalantly.
"I ask that same question myself every time I look at you, Padfoot. But that doesn't matter now," said Remus and waved a hand dismissingly, "What does matter is that it's Professor McGonagall. Not Minnie."
"Well, fine. McGonagall," Prongs gave up. "I guess Poppy ran off to Professor McGonagall to tell her that Padfoot beat me up and now he will probably have a detention!"
"Well, that suits me just fine," Sirius opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and dug around before finally pulling out a misshapen cookie, "My cookie reserve is almost empty."
James and Remus shared a disgusted with each other after they had seen the contents of the drawer. Cookie crumbs from the last seven years had transformed into a grey mass that was attached to the bottom and every little gap in the wood.
"You should really have a House Elf look into cleaning that Pads," James said with utter disgust, "That really can't be sanitary."
"Do you still want to know who she is?" asked Peter in an attempted to get the group back on track to the matter at hand.
"Of course," assured James vehemently, "I've got this gut feeling that she is really special. One of a kind."
Padfoot rolled his eyes. "Enough of James's love sick sentiments. Tomorrow we have Divination; we can ask the spirits who his mystery girl is." He laughed one of his trademark barking laughs and sunk his teeth into a second cookie.
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Sweet smoke filled the room. It smelled suspiciously like opium and several other intoxicating and illegal herbs and fungi.
"If you feel your aura climb on a new level, then tell your partners fortune from the cards," whispered Professor Delphi in a dramatic voice. Sirius put a Celtic cross for James on the table with unfocused eyes.
"We just ask the cards who you met in the dark," he grinned and turned the first card.
It was a cart that drove unremittingly over stones and a rolling countryside. But the second card caught Sirius' whole attention. It was a plump woman with two long blond braids in a Viking costume. She was armed and dangerously brandished her axe. In a hurry, Sirius flicked through the pages of his Divination book: The Cards (Almost) Never Lie by Calista Fibber.
"That's the Empress," Padfoot laughed loudly as he continued to read the description of what the card stood for, "She means fertility. Together with the cart it means that you are in for an unforgettable encounter," and he laughed even more.
"Very funny," James growled, "but I still don't know who she is!"
"Remus, Peter!" Sirius said with great difficulty, "Take a look at her!"
"She looks familiar," said Wormtail with small eyes.
"Peter, you're sitting too close to the opium sphere again," James remarked. "I think you're hallucinating!"
"No, I swear!" Wormtail said with a straight face.
"Now that you mention it," Remus stroked his invisible mustache, "She does look sort of familiar . . ."
Lily, who sat with Aurelia just one chintz cushion away, ignored the comments of the four boys as she brooded over the hidden meaning in her own cards. One showed a tornado that raced over a field and the second had a dancing and jumping court jester with his stuck his tongue out.
"Well," Aurelia grinned, "According to the cards: you will have an unusual change in attitude."
"What?" Lily asked disbelievingly, "with a court jester or a fool?"
"Yes!" her friend proclaimed.
"I don't know any court jesters or fools," Lily protested.
"Are you sure?" Aurelia pried and Lily nodded firmly. Sighing, Aurelia looked over Lily's shoulder to see James and friends laughing hysterically, "Why, in Merlin's name, are you lot laughing so hard?"
"We think that James's unforgettable encounter looks very familiar." Remus grinned and held the Empress high up so they could see the card. Despite their best sense, Lily and Aurelia came over.
"She looks like Gudrun Harkonson," Lily remarked as she took the card from Remus to examine it closer.
"The Swedish exchange student?" Sirius asked perking up like some sort of dog that just heard its owner put food in its dish.
"Yeah," Aurelia said taking the card from Lily.
"Well, then," Moony clapped James back, "Mystery solved, mate. She's all yours!"
"Gudrun is so scary," said Aurelia after starring at the card. "Do you believe that, she brought her own furniture to Hogwarts. They the Swedish are completely daft. And she always eats special bread that they just bake in her hometown. Wasa, I think it's called. Plus she got an ever lasting torch right next to her bed and she named it `Mid Summer'."
James gave his friends a pleading and pathetic look.
"Oh come on. You don't honestly believe all that rubbish! It is just Divination," Lily attempted to cheer James up, against her usual habit; "According to Aurelia, I will have an unusual change in attitude with a court jester or fool," She laughed, "Last time I checked, there weren't any court jesters attending Hogwarts." She glanced around the room. Remus held back a snort.
"You realize that she is completely wrong about that," whispered Remus to Aurelia. She gave him a knowing smile.
"Yes, I agree," she whispered back, "There is a court jester sitting right next to her."
"Exactly," Remus replied.
When Professor Delphi dismissed them the four boys and two girls all went together down the spiral staircase. James was a little down because he was thinking that his mystery woman was a Nordic woman who could eat him for breakfast. Sirius was still teasing James but Remus was serious again and was talking to Lily and Aurelia.
"You know, he really shouldn't believe the cards," insisted Lily, "They've never really told us something real." Slowly they reached the bottom of the stairs.
"I mean honestly, a fool!" Lily proclaimed, "I'm sure I would recognize one from a mile away." Lily still had her eyes on Aurelia who tried to hide a giggle. She hopped down two more steps and bumped into James.
Prongs was about to jump down the last two steps when someone bumped into him causing him to lose his balance. He waved his arms about in a futile attempt to regain his balance or grab onto the banister, but he fell face down on the floor.
"Merlin and Agrippa," Lily shrieked. "Are you alright?"
"YES!" James grumbled into the marble floor as he tried to get up.
"I'll help you," said a jolly voice with a heavy Scandinavian accent and seconds later he was lifted of the ground.
Through his broken glasses he looked in Gudrun Harkonson's blue eyes.
"I think you broke your nose," she said and handed him a tissue.
Not again, James thought and mumbled, "Thanks!"
"You're welcome!" Gudrun smiled, "You should go to the nurse." The others stood there with gaping mouths.
"Ehm, I'll take you to Madame Pomfrey," Lily said, snapping back to life. "Well, it's really my fault that you lost your balance and fell down the stairs." Lily took his arm and led him away in the direction of the Hospital Wing.
"Did she not just say few seconds ago she would recognize a fool," Aurelia thought aloud and stared after them.
"For you information, James is not a fool," Remus remarked, "He just acts like one every once in a while." All the while he was thinking about how correct the cards had been.
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