❀ 1.5 ❀
❀ Friends, Fighting, and Studying ❀
It had been some time (almost 2 months) since the start of year feast; Isla-Mae was very conscious of this fact, and studying in the library had become like second nature to her.
Unfortunately, being in the library meant that Isla-Mae had to deal with Lily's friend - that boy called Severus - from the train. It could've been nice to study with him, he was quite good at Defence against the Dark Arts and Potions, but he was constantly whining about how lily was abandoning him for her new Gryffindor friends. This was despite the fact that Lily was almost constantly with Sev, in all the spare time she could muster. Isla-Mae was about one more sentence away from punching Sev & telling him to not focus singularly on her, when Remus Lupin showed up.
Isla-Mae almost sighed in relief - she & Remus got along very well - then she saw the rest of the boys that he hung out with. Each of the boys on their own were okay, but them all together was a disaster just waiting to happen. Isla-Mae knew Sirius was incredibly hateful towards Slytherins, so she grabbed her books, her bag, Sev, and moved tables to one almost the entire library away. She gave a kind of 'well what can you do?' look to Sev & and he immediately walked off alone.
The rest of the evening passed, and Isla-Mae was cutting curfew hours very short. As luck would have it, though, Venus was studying in the library as well, so she and Isla-Mae walked together. They almost ran into Lucius Malfoy again, but Venus charmed Isla-Mae to blend into the surroundings and pretended to be doing her prefect rounds.
They made it back, like always, and Isla-Mae headed into her dorm room.
The next few days passed in a blur for Isla-Mae; a potions lesson partnered with Sammy, a transfiguration lesson made to sit next to Sirius, Maths next to Sev, Science next to Remus, Charms next to Jemmy, and Herbology partnered with Sammy again. Lessons were pretty easy for Isla-Mae, and all her worries of no actual academic lessons were washed away.
It was an often occurrence, then, that Lucius would pick on the first years of all of the houses - except his own - but Isla-Mae was not having that, and neither was Venus. Venus had decided that anyone who stood up to bullies - and she or Isla-Mae were there - would get 5 house points. Every prefect - and the head boy & girl - excluding Lucius, accepted this and applied this tactic. None of the teachers had any idea why all of the houses were gaining house points so fast, but they didn't really care.
Isla-Mae was sitting on the Gryffindor table (there were no rules against different houses sitting on the same tables) talking with Lily and her friends - Isla-Mae switched tables quite often when there were friendly faces near - when James Potter and the others showed up. James had become a nuisance to Lily very quickly, but never really overstepped on boundaries or was mean, he just was consistent on asking to talk and go on a date (Lily once said that if they were older than she would say yes, but they both had better things to do). Thankfully he only really asked once every few weeks or so, now.
Isla-Mae smiled at Remus when he sat next to her. They chatted for a while, before they both finished their food and decided to go do some of their homework in the library and compare answers.