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The Duel at Breakfast


True to their promise to Remus, the three second year boys waited ‘round the portrait hole to see Lily down to breakfast the next morning in their efforts to keep their eyes on her. She raised an eyebrow as she came down the stairs from the girl’s dormitory to see them hanging about. “What are you lot up to?” She asked suspiciously when they followed her down the corridor.

“Just going to breakfast,” replied Sirius casually.

“Like any other day,” added James.

“While keeping an eye out for you,” Peter tacked on. The other two glowered at him. “I mean, - I - it - I --”

“Keeping an eye on me?” Lily asked, stopping short so that Peter, still stammering, nearly slammed into her. “What are you keeping an eye on me for?” She demanded.

Sirius said, “Well you’re upset, aren’t you? We’re just being here for you,” he said, emphasizing the concept. “Making sure you know you aren’t alone and all that, so you know you’ve got a couple shoulders to lean on if you need’em.”

“Six shoulders, to be exact,” James chimed in, “Two each! That’s quite a lot of shoulders to cry on! You should consider yourself very lucky.”

Lily glowered at him a moment, then turned to Sirius and Peter, “I am quite alright, thank you, I needn’t any shoulders - much less six,” she added, her gaze returning to meet James’s.

“Well, they’re here if you change your mind,” said Sirius.

“All six of’m,” James added.

“I won’t need them,” she said. Lily started back off down the corridor again. She got several feet ahead, but she could still feel their eyes on her back, hear their footfalls echoing her own. She sighed, annoyed, but ignored them. She ate her breakfast with them lined up across the table from her, all three watching her. She felt rather like a grenade about to explode, the way they were gazing at her expectantly. “Where is Remus, by the way?” She asked, hoping that getting them talking might make them stop staring like they were.

“An excellent question that I think quite a lot of people would rather like to know,” came a voice from behind Lily. She turned around and there was Severus Snape, arms crossed over his chest. He was glaring very harshly at James, who was glaring just as harshly back.

“What business is it of yours where Remus is?” James asked Snape hotly.

“Sev!” Cried Lily in surprise before he could answer James’s inquiry, “Whatever are you doing over here at the Gryffindor table? I thought this was forbidden territory for you?” Her voice carried just a hint of sarcasm.

Severus took a deep breath, “I need to talk to you. Can you come with me please?”

Lily shrugged, “Why don’t you talk to me here?”

“It’s a private matter,” Severus said lowly, glancing at the other three.

Lily replied, “Well I’m busy, Sev, I’ve got important things to do that will keep me busy for some time. You know what it’s like - it’s just like you were all summer. I’ll talk to you when I’m able.” She turned back to the table and lifted up her toast.

James was smirking.

“Lily, come off it. I wasn’t at home,” Severus said, “That’s not my fault you haven’t got any other friends!”

Lily’s eyebrows knit together.

Severus sighed, “That came out wrong, I know. I’m sorry. But Lily, will you come talk to me, please?” He reached for her shoulder and she shrugged him off. “Lily, please.”

Sirius stood up. “Hey, Snivellus, she said she’s busy and she’ll talk to you later.”

Severus shot a glare at Sirius, but ignored him and reached out for Lily’s shoulder a second time. “Lil, c’mon.”

“Stop it, Sev, I’m not interested in what you’ve got to say right now, alright?” Lily snapped.

Severus reached once again for her, “Lily, please, I --” but before he could finish the sentence, James hit him with a poorly executed version of Lily’s bat-bogey hex. Severus stumbled backward from the strike and tumbled into a Hufflepuff girl that had been walking by carrying a bowl of oatmeal. The cereal went flying into the air, splashing over a Ravenclaw who shouted an obscenity rather loudly, so that it echoed through the Great Hall, and, as Severus landed on the flagstone floor, his nose bursting with winged bogeys, every head in the room turned ‘round to see the commotion. Oatmeal oozed off the front of the Ravenclaw boy as the Hufflepuff hastened to repair the shattered bowl and James loomed triumphantly over Severus Snape. The bogeys were fluttering out of his nose and bouncing off his cheeks, all green and slimey looking.

“What did you do that for?” Lily squealed at James, “For Merlin’s sake, can’t you control yourself?”

James started to defend himself, “He was bothering you and I --”

But Severus had leaped up from the floor and aimed his wand back at James. “Everte statum,” he said. The spell hit James, interrupting him mid-sentence, and threw him backward as though someone had shoved him hard against the chest. His back hit the Gryffindor table and he tripped over it, somersaulting to the other side, where he landed on the stone floor.

“Stop it!” Lily cried.

Severus and James were both up on their feet again in a moment, facing one another across the table, and Sirius raised his wand to defend his friend, but Severus was quicker. “Impedimenta.” Sirius was suddenly unable to move, a look of anger on his face, wand half raised.

Rictusempra,” said James, causing Severus to begin to giggle and laugh uncontrollably so hard that his sides hurt and he had to double over to clutch onto them. “What’s so funny, Snivvey?” Asked James in a mocking tone.

Severus barely managed to squeeze the word “singulato” out among laughter, but he did it and James broke out in violent hiccups. But hiccups - no matter how violent - were not about to stop a Gryffindor, and James chucked his wand aside and went at Severus Snape like a muggle.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Lily cried.

Suddenly, hers was not the only voice protesting. Professor Flitwick had thrown himself into the flurry as Severus aimed his wand in response to the punches James was throwing at him. Flitwick only just dodged a spell cast by Severus when James’s fist knocked him ‘round the ears and, quite fed up with the both of them, he set off a bang from his wand that knocked them both backward in surprise, Severus still giggling uncontrollably from the floor as James hiccuped. “Finite incantantum!” Flitwick said and the giggling and hiccuping stopped. Sirius also unfroze and shook off the impedimenta jinx. James and Severus lay sprawled on the floor on either side of Flitwick, both panting, trying to catch their breath.

Peter bent down and picked James’s wand up from the floor, a grim look on his face as he clutched James’s wand as well as his own.

“I never,” gasped Flitwick, quite offended. He looked between the two boys, “This is utterly ridiculous! Up with the both of you!” He looked about and spotted the Fat Friar - the ghost of Hufflepuff house. “You there, Friar!” He called. The Friar looked over. “Inform Professors McGonagall and Slughorn that I’ll be needing their assistance in my office, if you would, please. I’ve got some students of theirs they’ll be needing to collect.” He scowled, “Now, both of you, come with me.”

“But I was just defending Lily!” James protested, “Snape was pushing her ‘round!”

“Then she should have gotten a member of the faculty to assist her!” Flitwick answered, “There was no call to start dueling in the Great Hall. And fighting like a muggle! My God boy - are you a wizard or aren’t you?” With a sigh, Flitwick motioned for James and Severus to follow him up to his office.

James looked helplessly back at Sirius as he left the room, following after Flitwick and Severus Snape. “Good luck,” Sirius mouthed at his friend.

Peter still held James’s wand in his fist.

Lily was pink around the face. Sirius stared after them, still disoriented from the freezing charm Snape had cast upon him. “Well, they’ll be in a load of hot water, I reckon,” he muttered.

“It serves them right, the both of them,” Lily said, rolling her eyes, “And at breakfast, too.” She sat back down with a huff, just thankful neither of them had managed to do any real damage to anything or anyone.

The biggest casualty as it were was the bowl of oatmeal the Hufflepuff had spilled and a couple pieces of french toast that had fallen on the floor when James went skidding across the table. Peter looked down at the fallen toast with a look of sadness. It seemed that was quite a big loss indeed to him at least.

Lily realized quickly, with one glance at her plate, that she was no longer hungry at all. She stood up and grabbed her book bag, deciding to go to the library. She started to turn to go, then paused and turned back to Sirius and Peter. “Where did you say Remus was?” She asked.

Sirius shrugged, “I dunno,” he lied. “He’s about some place, I’m sure. Maybe he’s having a lie-in.”

Lily frowned. Sirius’s eyes had looked funny as he said it and she knew he was lying. Not only did he certainly know where Remus was, wherever Remus was at, he was definitely not ‘having a lie-in’. Suddenly worried, Lily hoped against hope that Remus wasn’t getting into trouble, wherever he was. “Well, when you see him, tell him I was looking for him, will you?”

Sirius nodded, “I will tell him the moment I see him.” He watched Lily walk off for a moment, then turned to Peter with a sigh, “Well that went peachy.”

Peter looked up from the french toast he was now stuffing into his mouth. “What did?” He asked, mouth full.

“Nevermind,” Sirius replied, hoping that the toast Peter was eating wasn’t the same ones that had fallen onto the floor. He didn’t dare to look - he figured some things were probably best left unknown.




It was nearly lunch before James had made his way back up to Gryffindor tower. He threw his bookbag onto the floor as he stepped through the dorm room door and climbed up onto his bed. Sirius was laying across his own bed, looking at the broom catalog again. “How’d it go?” Asked Peter from his desk, where he was studying his Charms notes.

“I’ve got loads of detention,” James replied in a monotone, staring up at the ceiling. He sighed and put his arms up behind his head. “McGonagall was furious.”

“Sorry mate,” said Sirius from behind the broom catalog. “But at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing old Snivelly’s getting detention, too, right?”

James sighed his heaviest yet. “I would, except that he isn’t getting any.”

“What?” Sirius dropped the catalog. “Whyever on earth would he not get any detention? Is Slughorn that soft?”

James answered, “Well according to Slughorn, fighting one another and dueling isn’t a horrible thing; he was excited to hear the play-by-play, rather, and Severus left Flitwick’s office right chummy with him before McGonagall ever got near the place.”

Sirius groaned. “So very soft.”

“Then McGonagall shows up and you know how stern she can be. She gave me The Look and goes off on me about dueling etiquette and the like, telling me how big a disgrace to Gryffindor I am, and the long and short of it is I’ve got bloody detention tonight and tomorrow night while Severus gets off!”

“Well that ain’t fair!” Protested Sirius, “Did you tell McGonagall?” James nodded. “What did she say?”

James rolled his eyes, “Said punishment for the Slytherins is up to the Slytherin head of house, and if that’s the sort of discipline Slughorn wanted to give his students, that’s his prerogative, but that she, head of Gryffindor house, wasn’t about to let me off so easily!” James had mimicked McGonagall’s clipped accent so well that Peter laughed, his pudgy cheeks puffed like a little chipmunk.

Sirius rolled his eyes, “Merlin’s beard! They need to regulate that sort of thing!”

James shrugged, “Well they haven’t yet. So it looks as though I’ll be getting a sore elbow cleaning off old trophies in the trophy room while Severus is off doing whatever his greasy heart desires.” He rolled over and bunched the pillow up to his cheek, curling his knees up to his chest, quite finished with talking about Severus Snape.