Simulacra
When James and I came to lunch, Sirius was at the table, waiting for us.
He was staring very intently at his plate, pushing around a single potato wedge.
I sent James a concerned glance. He returned it - but offered an easy enough shrug.
And, clearly, decided this situation did not need a subtle touch.
“Hey Pads.” He said, flopping easily into the chair across from Sirius and taking to potato wedge for himself. Sirius glanced up at him - and offered a wide grin.
“Prongs! I’ve been waiting on you - where’re the others?”
“Here,” I offered, sitting next to James and tipping Sirius my best two-finger wave. I pushed down the concern in my chest, and instead just did my best to smile.
Sirius grinned right back.
“And Wormtail?”
I shrugged.
“He’ll be here soon. Probably.”
Sirius leaned back, offering us yet another wide, unsteady grin. He propped his feet up on the table - and raised a finger as he talked.
“Alright lads. I have come up with - a plan.”
I blinked. James, on the other hand, was already grinning right along.
“Already, Pads?” he said, leaning forward and putting his hands on the table. “Which genius idea have you come up with now, oh-so-wonderful pal o’ mine?”
“Well, you wondrously clever gentlemen,” Sirius fired back - I sighed lowly. “I have decided that - of course - young Mr. Maeyres must be introduced to the school more… formally.”
James - clearly already catching on, what with the psychic connection he and Sirius clearly shared - nodded thoughtfully, lips twitching.
“That does seem to be the best course of action, my good man. But you must be aware - no slimy snakes better be the ones to show him around.”
“Took the words right outta my mouth, you amazing stag, you.” Sirius said.
I glanced up, and took only a moment to ask God and Merlin above to give me the strength required for this trial of patience, before saying in as monotone a voice as I could manage,
“What are you two idiots blathering on about.”
Sirius glanced at me - as if he had forgotten I was still there.
Honestly, he probably had.
“Oh, right. Well, we’re gonna give Harry a tour of the school, once classes are over.”
I stared at him, for a moment.
“But. Uhm. He doesn’t know us. Or like us. Or give a shit what we think.”
James and Sirius both gasped.
“Such language, Mr. Lupin!”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth, Rem?”
“Well, of course not, Pads, that would just be unbelievable rude.”
“Just fucking deplorable.”
“Utterly awful.”
“Terrible.”
“Shitty.”
“Ju-”
“Could you two stop, please, and explain?” I said, trying to not get annoyed.
“Well, we’ll get the cloak-” James said - before taking a sip from his goblet as Sirius leaped in with a,
“Mosey down to his dorm room - he’s in Gryffindor, after all-”
“Make sure he’s asleep,”
“Tie him up,”
“And throw his bed into the great lake!” they chorused.
And then high-fived.
(I was really starting to wish I had never told them about that. They always took too well to muggle things.)
“...You are aware,” I said quietly, wishing that Peter was here. He could usually tone the two down, at least a little, when their plans got a bit… off the rails. “That this could very well kill him.”
“He’ll be fine.” Sirius said, instantly. “He’s a wizard, isn’t he?”
“I mean, we would certainly be fine.” James added, taking another sip of whatever was in his goblet.
“Yes, but you two have learned to wake up on a hair-trigger and to always expect early morning retaliation pranks.”
“We can always lift him out,” James said.
“Besides, if Harry doesn’t already expect this kinda stuff - we better teach him, right?” Sirius added - and the light behind his eyes was that one I really didn’t like.
The one that had been there the night before he sent Snape into the Whomping Willow.
I took a deep breath.
In.
And out.
“...Alright. We’ll do it. But if it looks like he can’t get out on his own-”
“Pull him right up.” James said, instantly. Sirius looked a little more reluctant - but nodded.
Sometimes I wondered if I would’ve ended up better, if I had let the Sorting Hat put me in Slytherin.
The next class was History of Magic. Neither James, nor Sirius attended it - they’re aspirations to become Marauders only required five N.E.W.T.s, and History of Magic wouldn’t help them. I, on the other hand, wanted to do some more digging into this subject - even though I still wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life after Hogwarts.
Professor Binns was… interesting. He had a very odd teaching style, anyway. He didn’t really like practical lessons, but he certainly showed excitement in his subject. He seemed to despise, on principal, any talk of things that weren’t identifiable fact - he had once gone on a rant about ‘the forest of all knowledge,’ and how getting lost in what was and wasn’t true was a good way to strand yourself amongst the foliage and beasts, waiting in the dark.
This time, I looked for Harry the moment we entered.
He was sitting in the very back, next to Pandora - who always sat about as far back as she could manage, with the exception of magical theory class, where she sat front and center. His eyes were pinned to Pandora’s hands, busy folding a paper crane.
Pandora Simulacra was the weirdest witch I had ever known. No exceptions. Sure, Marlene was a little odd here and there, and the squib who helped the Herbology professor had never spoken once, as far as I knew - but Pandora was a whole other level of odd. She had straight O’s one year, and T’s the next. Her interests flipped as wildly as her hair - she spent more time in the library then anywhere else, likely including her home and dorm. Her hands never stopped moving, as far as I could tell - her fingers twitched when not active, and she often busied herself by folding her napkins and papers into pieces of intricate origami. Cranes were actually quite mundane for her.
But I didn’t know much about her, outside of hearsay. After all, James and Sirius hated all Slytherins on instinct - and I tried not to interact with people my friends hated.
I slid into my seat - still sending the occasional glance at Harry, who was still watching Pandora fold.
My ears twitched when they started whispering.
“You’re staring,” Pandora said, lowly.
I did my best to stare as inconspicuously as possible.
Harry smiled, a little.
“I was just curious. I’ve always wanted to be able to fold paper cranes. Never learned properly.”
Pandora turned to him - and blinked.
“You could have asked. Your eyes are very old.”
Harry’s smile didn’t falter.
“Are they?”
“Yes. You have eyes like the pits of hell. Dark, empty - cold and hot at once. Filled with the murmurings of forgotten things. Where did you get those scars?”
“Which ones?” Harry muttered back - his eyes drifted to Pandora’s tie. Her tie clip was pearly white today.
He seemed oddly unfazed by the way Pandora hopped from subject to subject.
“The ones around your eyes.”
“Oh. Those are from a… trip. I didn’t make the proper preparations for it, and uh… got a little torn up on the way over.”
Pandora blinked - and tilted her head a little.
“Mm. Interesting.”
“You’re in Slytherin?” Harry said, gesturing to her tie.
“Oh. Yes, I believe so. I haven’t checked in a while, though - perhaps you should ask Arceus.”
Harry blinked.
“Arceus?”
“Mm. He’s a hat. We’re friends.”
Harry nodded thoughtfully - like this made perfect sense.
“Eh. I don’t really want to talk to that particular hat, at the moment. Our last conversation left him a little mad at me.”
Pandora’s eyes tore through him.
“Mad? What could possibly make Arceus mad?”
“Uh… seeing his own death?” Harry said with a shrug.
I blinked.
Pandora’s eyes widened, a little.
“...You aren’t from around here, are you?”
Harry smiled. “What gave it away?”
Pandora leaned forward - and her eyes were suddenly wide and sharp as daggers.
“How did you get here?”
Harry opened his mouth.
Paused.
Closed it.
And glanced around.
I instantly turned back to the front, and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.
“This isn’t the place.” He murmured - I had to strain my ears to hear him, even with the slight boost I had. “We’ll talk in your dorms after classes?”
My hand gripped the edge of my desk.
This was getting more and more interesting by the moment.
I didn’t see Pandora nod - but I didn’t have to.
I’d see where Harry went on the map, anyway.
It took another two minutes for Binns to arrive.
The door slammed open without warning. A few students startled - I nearly leaped out of my chair.
“I’m here! I’m here!” Binns called, rushing through the doors with a stack of papers in his hands.
He set the papers on his desk the moment he was close enough, and whipped out his wand - flicking it at the door and the chalk in a single movement.
The chalk in question lifted and wrote on the left-hand side of the board, in a hasty, scratchy movement,
Nastily
Exhausting
Wizarding
Tests
“The N.E.W.T.s!” he called, straightening quickly and running a hand through his greying hair. “The most important test in your prepubescent lives, with the possible exception of the O.W.L.s! Your job is to study your behinds off and manage to get through them without losing ten years of your life - and my job is to make sure you can accomplish that just by doing what I say! So I don’t want to hear one of you complaining, alright? We both know how much this will hurt to go through, there’s no need to talk about it! Now-”
His chalk drew a harsh dividing line between what it had just written, and the rest of the board. It began hastily scratching line after line of hard-to-read script, while Binns rushed on with his speech.
“I will admit, the last few years of this class have been fairly easy! The assignments were usually just a bit of fun, the homework was just making sure you could listen to lectures and read passages - we even had the occasional party!”
This was true. Binns had thrown a small party for the students who had passed his O.W.L, the first day of class. It had been a decent amount of fun, even without Sirius and James there - especially considering that they’d had that class with the Hufflepuffs instead, which made for a much more interesting party. He’d done this again last year.
“But no more!”
A few faces crumpled.
I glanced back.
Harry was staring up at Binns with what looked like something close to shock.
“This year, we’ve got to get you prepared to go out into the world! We’ve got to make sure you’re never blindsided by important information in the middle of an argument! We’ve got to make sure no aspiring Ministers for Magic in here rush us headfirst into a war with the Goblins by accidentally committing a social faux pas! And, more importantly then all that,”
He turned to us, suddenly.
“We’ve got to make sure I, have, a, good, record!”
A pause.
And I couldn’t help but laugh.
A few students joined me - and Binns’ face relaxed as he chuckled with us.
“Okay, okay,” he said, as the laughs died down, “but really. We’ve got to make sure you pass this N.E.W.T. I really am in danger of being fired - and you’re in danger of failing one of your N.E.W.T.s. So we’ve got plenty of motivation! And motivation is the first step to success!”
He drew out his wand again - and tapped the board sharply, pointing at the text on the board.
“So, this year - we’ll be covering the hardest, and thus, most interesting fields of study! The wars between wizards and centaurs, the origins of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures - we’ll have no talk of politics, of course - the rapid spread of scrofungulus and the disruption of the growth of the Ministry, the origins of the three Unforgivable Curses - you’ll be doing an essay on one of them, as well - and just a little extra about dragons, nymphs, and maybe a little talk of dementors if we’ve got some time. I want you all to record this syllabus - it should be a big help as we go through the class! And pay attention, now, because we’re going to get bogged down in little details fast if you don’t record your notes! Really, it’s not as important to understand me as to write notes that you’re able to understand later! So - let’s get started!”
I dipped my quill in my ink - and got ready to start taking notes.
And glanced back at Harry one last time.
Harry looked… blank. That was the only word for it. A blank slate of a mask that hid all of what was happening behind his eyes.
He dipped his quill in Pandora’s ink to record the syllabus - and seemed unconcerned by how it flared up into multicolour flames that trailed behind him as he wrote.