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The Story of an Ickle Third Year


“Potter! You should’ve had that one!” Derek sounded disappointed. He frowned up at James from below as James twisted his broom about. He’d narrowly missed catching the Snitch but it had outsmarted him by flying into the sun and escaping his grasp by a mere inch. Derek sighed and ran his hand through his hair in frustration.

“I’m sorry,” James said, his head hanging, “I’m really sorry.”

Derek looked around at the others. “Everyone take a break and get some water for a minute, alright?” he asked.

Isaac Horan scowled, “Are we seriously taking a break so the ickle little second year can have a good cry? Why don’t you just get the Ravenclaw Seeker and be done with him?”

Derek glowered at Isaac, “Bloody take a break or I’ll be looking for a new Beater. Don’t give me an excuse to put Bilius Weasley in your place.” Isaac didn’t push it further, the tone of Derek’s voice showed he meant business, so Isaac flew off to the clubhouse, where the others had all gone. He flew up to where James was hovering, his head hanging to his chest, hair in his eyes. “Alright, Potter,” he said, “What’s going on?”

James sighed, “Maybe Horan’s right, maybe you should get another Seeker.”

Derek raised his eyebrow. “You’re telling me that after all that bloody warning you’ve done for the last two years about being a Seeker, you’re going to back out first chance you get because you’ve had a couple of tough practices?”

“I’m rubbish,” James replied.

Derek shook his head, “You’re not rubbish. What’s got you down?” He flew closer and lowered his voice a bit, “Is it your dad you’re worried about?”

James bit his lip. “Well… sort of. I just - see, my dad can’t come to the tourney. Because of what’s happened. And…” He let his words trail off, feeling stupid.

“He’s your quidditch buddy, isn’t he?” Derek asked knowingly.

James nodded.

“So your heart’s just not in it?”

“I s’pose.”

“Well bloody hell, get your heart into it, Potter!” Derek said, his tone suddenly changing from gentle to stern. “This is a huge game! Witches and wizards from two continents are going to be in attendance and the Quidditch commissioner, too. You have dreams of going pro one day, don’t you?”

James nodded.

“Then you’ve got to play this game, and you’ve got to give it 100% of yourself. This game could literally set you up a whole career!” Derek said, “You can’t back out over your dad not being in the crowd. He’d want you to play it your best.”

“Yeah,” James agreed tentatively.

Derek looked him right in the eyes, “Now listen to me, James, I’m going to tell you something that someone told me recently that literally changed my entire life, alright? Don’t live in fear. I know it sounds stupid because literally everyone is afraid right now - it’s what happens when there’s a Dark Lord running amuck on the country, but fear and pain are what he’s trying to cause.”

James looked up at Derek.

“He wants us all to be scared and weak by the things he does. You-Know-Who doesn’t want you to be happy. Well, I say don’t let him win. He killed my sister and my parents, and I was in a very dark place for a long while… I didn’t know how to get myself out. I felt like I was drowning everyday, no matter what I did or where I went, I was being pulled under this thick dark weight and it just kept pressing on my chest, like a great elephant had sat down on me. I felt two-dimensional. But you know what? We can’t live like that. We can’t grow like that. We just die from the oppression. And that’s what He wants, isn’t it?”

James nodded.

“Well give him a go for it, then! Fight for your future. Do what makes you happiest. Because at the end of it all, at the very end of everything, that is the only way that we can truly defeat the Dark Lord. It’s the best way to defy him.”

“Okay,” James said.

Derek took a deep breath and clapped a palm onto James’s back. “Alright. So are we going to play better now?”

James answered, “I’m going to try.”

“You ruddy well better,” Derek smiled. “Go on. Go get the snitch. I’ll get the others to come back out. I think we can get a bit more time in before the sun goes down.”




“He bloody said what?” demanded Sirius, glowering and sitting up. James had just told the boys about Isaac Horan’s fit on the Quidditch pitch. The record player was spinning a new Bob Dylan that they had ordered by Owl Post and they’d been lying about the dormitory listening while they pretended to be at their homework, though only Peter was really doing anything. Even Remus had fallen into a bout of laziness, still recovering from his wolfish night. Now, though, Sirius grabbed at the needle and pulled it from the record with a whirring noise that made Peter look up abruptly from his revisions.

“Called me an ickle second year, said I was going to cry and recommended Derek just replace me with the Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff Seeker,” James answered.

Sirius scowled. “Ruddy Slytherin,” he sneered.

Remus shook his head, though he didn’t say anything and Peter quickly returned to his work, seeing as he couldn’t say anything around the mandrake leaf anyway.

“I know,” James murmured. “Derek told him to shut it, though, and threatened to put Bilius in his place on the tourney team.”

“He can’t do that, though, can he?” said Remus, “The rules clearly stated one player from every house has to be represented. Isaac’s sort of got his spot on the team secure.”

James sighed. “Stupid rules. We ought to kick the whole of Slytherin out of the school. To hell with the whole bloody lot of them!”

Sirius agreed heartily.

“Well that’s just the same feeling they have about us, isn’t it? Just in reverse,” Remus pointed out. “Remember, prejudice works both ways.”

“Why do you have to go and be so smart for?” demanded Sirius.

Remus shrugged.

James said, stubbornly, “It isn’t exactly prejudiced if they’re all mad pondscum samples, now is it?”

Peter pointed to James with his quill in agreement. “Wuhh huu suhh!”

Remus gave Peter a funny look for the full mouthed talking, but he’d been headed off enough times asking about it that he didn’t bother asking again, and turned back to James. “They’re not the best of people, but perhaps they aren’t all horrible. Maybe some of them are alright, really. Like - I dunno, take Snape for example --”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Sirius interrupted. “You’re using Snivellus as your example for a good Slytherin? Are you mad? After the mirror last year and all that he did with that Malfoy bloke? After how many times did he try and do us in to Filch? Loads! Oi, if Snivellus is a good Slytherin, then I hate to see your example of a lousy one.”

“Yeah,” agreed James, “Snivelly’s a real piece of work, Rey. He ain’t any good! Remember when we dueled in the Great Hall? He’s mad!”

Remus looked apologetic, “Well, if I recall, it was actually you who started that one, wasn’t it?” he said to James, one eyebrow raised.

“Nuh-uh!” James said vehemently.

“It was all Snivellus,” agreed Sirius.

“Ahhuhhh… hhaa huhhhuhuh uh,” Peter input. But nobody, not even James, who had gotten fairly good at understanding, could translate it.

Remus sighed. It had been James that started it, but he wasn’t going to argue about it - it was pointless. Especially with two (possibly three) of them against him. “Look, whoever started it, my point is that maybe the Slytherins aren’t all as bad as they seem is all.”

“You’re right,” James muttered, “Most of them are worse.”

Remus gave up.

Sirius returned to the conversation that had sprung it up. “So Derek told Horan to shut it, did he? Good! Horan doesn’t want to be opening his big mouth ‘round me about it or I’ll hex him.”

“Please do. Turn his nose into a pelican beak or something,” James said.

Sirius giggled at the idea of Isaac Horan zooming about the Quidditch pitch with a great big pelican beak and held his sides to keep them from hurting.




Following the incident on the pitch, the Gryffindor house stuck close by James as the news went about the school that Isaac Horan was keen for the Seeker to be replaced. Frank Longbottom and Timothy Baler took the long route to their fourth year Herbology class to see the second years to their Transfiguration lesson, and Bilius walked with them up to Astronomy. And when it was time to go to Potions in the dungeons, half the house walked down with them, eyeing the cluster of second year Slytherins outside of Slughorn’s classroom until the potions master himself had let them all in.

A week later, James was sitting in the common room, studying his Defense Against the Dark Arts book when Sirius and Remus came spilling in through the portrait hole, having been in the library for the past hour, seeking a particular supportive text that Remus needed for his essay. Sirius was positively beaming with excitement as he ran across the room to James, leaping onto the couch beside him and upsetting all his Defense notes.

“Bloody hell, mate, you’ve gone and scattered them everywhere!” James exclaimed, jumping up to capture one of the pages before it fluttered into the fire. He collected the others from the floor. “Do you mind? I’m revising for the exams!”

“Forget the exams,” Sirius said gleefully, “I’ve got something you’re never going to believe.”

“What is it?” James asked, still more focused on the order of his notes than Sirius.

Sirius withdrew a book from behind his back, waving it eagerly in James’s face. “This,” he said.

James adjusted his glasses and squinted at the too-close cover. “Hexes and Jinxes for The Practical Joker?” he read.

“This book is brilliant,” Sirius breathed. He quickly sat beside James’s spot as his friend sank into place, and whipped open the cover so that the book lay across both their laps. “Just look at it! Merlin’s beard, what were they thinking stocking something like this and not expecting students to use it!” He pointed, “I mean, look at that - it’s positively amazing.” It was a spell that would dye one’s eyebrows and another that he pointed to which would make every toilet in a thirty foot radius suddenly overflow.

James stared down at it in amazement. “Wow,” he whispered.

“I know,” breathed Sirius. “I knicked it so if we tried something out we wouldn’t get caught at it.”

Remus looked over their shoulders with a disapproving face. “I still can’t believe you took that,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Madam Pince will notice it missing, you know.”

“How couldn’t I have done?” Sirius demanded. “I mean, look at it. It’s basically mine and James’s bible! And besides, Madam Pince is about a thousand years old, she won’t notice it missing. And if she does, then she still won’t know who knicked it, will she? I’ll bring it back, just not ‘til I’ve copied a good deal of it down is all.”

Remus shook his head and went over to the table, where Lily was studying with Peter, leaving the other two at it.

“Blimey, look at this,” cooed James, pointing to a spell that would cause a person to have the illusion that everything was upside down, as though they were standing on the sky. “That’s mad! But awesome.”

Suddenly there was the sound of laughter from over their shoulders and they both looked up to see Bilius Weasley hanging over them. “Aha, so you’ve found it, have you?”

“Found it?” Sirius asked.

Bilius leaned down and put his arms ‘round their shoulders. “Fellas,” he began, “Let me tell you a story about an ickle third year who, discovering that red hair and freckles doesn’t exactly do miles for your popularity, realized that being a comic relief was the ticket to makin’ mates and winning the attentions of the ladies of Hogwarts…”

“His name doesn’t happen to be Bilius, does it?” James grinned.

“It may have been, I don’t recall,” Bilius said, “Now shut up and listen to this story, it’s quite a good one. So here is this little, very good-looking third year - he’s wanderin’ about in Flourish and Blotts at start of term with his mum and gettin’ his books, you know, the usual back-to-school shopping trip… and behold, Flourish and Blotts has a new volume, not on the list for school, but with a highly intriguing, brightly colored cover. Hexes and Jinxes for the Practical Joker it says. Well, this ickle little third year takes this book off the shelf and the moment he does --” Bilius waved his arms and let out a long, high note of song, “ -- the Hallelujah Chorus begins, the angels descend from on Heaven, and, glowing with the light of the gift of the gods, our hero, the ickle third year, takes the book to the register and purchases it. So was born a legend of Hogwartian proportions!”

Sirius smirked, “It happened just like that, did it?”

“It did. Cross my heart,” Bilius said.

Derek, who was standing behind Bilius said, “We’re still waiting on confirmation about the angelic choir.”

Bilius said, “They were there! I’m telling you. Fate brought this book to that ickle third year. He read it straight through in one sitting, cover to cover, and absorbed the mischief thus put forth, and the next you know, the school can talk of nothing but! It’s brilliance in every dot and tittle of the text, my friends.”

“And how did it end up in the library, exactly?” Sirius asked, “If it’s yours, why’s it in the library?”

“I never said it was mine,” Bilius said, “I said it was the ickle third year’s. Well see, our hero, he kept it until he was given a Prefect badge in sixth year and then he realized that he needed to cease his practical joking ways, man-up, and pass on the torch to the next worthy student who passed the threshold of Hogwarts school. But seeing as he was a prefect and all, admitting openly that the book was his secret to chaotic genius was hardly something he could do. So, he put the book in the library and waited. And waited. It seemed to him that none would ever find this tome, this message that brought tidings of hope for laughter and revenge. And now, here we are, two students, worthy of the inheritance, have found the book.”

“So it’s not even an actual library book then?” Sirius said, grinning.

Bilius laughed, “Do you truly expect Madam Pince to have stocked a book that contains a spell which turns a person’s hair wild colors?” Bilius grinned wickedly, “I’m rather sure Madam Pince would have loved to have known where that spell came from the day the Ickle Third Year tried it out on her and she went mad as her hair kept turning every color of the rainbow as fast as she could turn it back it would turn a new colour, like a metamorphmangus gone mad!”

Derek guffawed, “I remember that!”

Bilius wiggled his eyebrows.

Sirius was flipping the pages madly, looking for that spell.

Bilius leaned back down, putting his arms back over James and Sirius’s shoulders once again and he said, “All I’m saying, as Head Boy, is… use it well.” He winked and nodded to Derek, “C’mon, before I see something I’m obligated to confiscate.” He grinned and the two of them bounded up the stairs to the seventh year dormitories as Sirius found the hair-color changing spell and snickered as he aimed his wand at Peter’s back.