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The Mentor


James had doodled a great many golden snitches along the edge of his notes parchment in History of Magic, and he prodded them with his wand to get them flying about the page, too bored to pay attention to Slughorn anymore. Sirius looked over from his own parchment, grinning and quickly drew a whole pitch, three rings on each side of his page and a quaffle in the middle, before pushing it so the page lay between his and James’s elbows on the desktop and the two of them took their wants and moved the illustrated quaffle about the imaginary pitch. Lily looked over her shoulder at them as their wands made clicking noises as they clashed against one another, fighting for control over the doodled ball. She shook her head.

Professor Binns had been going on for what seemed like centuries. Even Remus was starting to nod off in the late summer heat that filled the room as Binns droned on and on. He let out a great big yawn and leaned his head against the heel of his hand. Peter was the only one truly diligently taking notes on what Binns said, and it was mostly just because he knew if he didn’t he’d be the one most likely to fail the class and he didn’t fancy being the one left behind.

James had just sunk the drawn quaffle through Sirius’s rings when the door to the classroom opened up and Professor McGonagall stepped into the room, her face gravely serious. The very sight of her sent a thrill of nervousness through each one of the Gryffindors in the room. They exchanged glances - McGonagall interrupting a class was not a good sign. “Excuse me, Professor Binns,” she called, but the ghostly figure at the front continued on as though he hadn’t heard her. “Professor!” she yelled. He seemed to snap to attention, looking up in surprise.

“You… er, have a question Miss…. Miss….” Binns let the sentence trail off, unable to recall her name.

“I’m here to collect James Potter,” McGonagall said, “I shall be withdrawing him from glass a wee bit early today.”

James felt the blood run cold in his veins and a lump rise up in his throat. My dad’s dead, he thought, sick at the thought of it.

McGonagall turned about to face him. “Mr. Potter… a word.”

The others all looked at him with nervous expressions - even Lily - and Sirius squeezed James’s shoulder as he stood up, a concerned look on his face that told James that he wasn’t crazy for being worried… and therefore made him even more so. He got up, feeling as though his trainers were made of iron. He stared down at them as he followed Professor McGonagall out the door and into the hallway.

The moment the classroom door shut, James demanded, ‘Who killed him?”

McGonagall looked down at James in surprise, “What?” she asked.

“My father,” James replied, “Who killed him? Who do I have to kill to avenge him?” He had his fists balled, and a clench-jawed look of determination, his eyes just a little too wide and too wet to be as brave as the act he was putting on. His entire body trembled from the very bottom to the top, his glasses crooked.

McGonagall’s eyes were confused, and then melted into an expression of pity. “Oh Potter - is that what you think? I apologize.” She put a hand on his shoulder as he officially broke out in tears. “Oh my, my… Come along, Potter.” She led him briskly down the hall to her office, which, luckily, wasn’t too far from Professor Binns’s classroom, so they didn’t even bump into anyone on the way. “Your father is okay, Potter!” she reassured him and she pointed her wand to the handle on her office door and murmured the password she had set upon her door earlier that year to keep out prying students.

The moment they were through McGonagall’s office door, she paused to take a tartan handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to James. “Dry your eyes, Mr. Potter,” she said in what James imagined was probably the gentlest tone that Professor McGonagall could work through her brisk accent. She held out her hand for his glasses and he took them off and wiped his face with the handkerchief, his skin all red. James had managed to work himself up too much already and though he knew things were alright, telling himself to calm down was a bit more of a challenge than maybe it should have been. McGonagall very patiently waited.

When at last he’d taken a deep, shuddering breath, and the tears had stopped, he took back his glasses and shoved them back up his nose. He looked uncertainly at the handkerchief, then up at McGonagall. She waved a palm to the empty chair in front of her desk and he took a seat and she waved her wand to produce a cup of tea for him as she sat in her own chair as though none of the crying had ever happened.

James sipped the tea she’d given him and his eyes slid over the spines of books on her shelf, landing on a whole shelf of books on Animagi, held up by two cat-shaped bookends. Very suddenly his heart nearly stopped. He looked up at her as he brought the tea back to his lips, trying to keep his nerves steady.

“What I have to say is very important and it is not to leave this room. Do you understand?” McGonagall’s jaw was very stiff.

James nodded, trying to remember how exactly his tongue was supposed to go in his mouth. It felt like it had swelled about a hundred times its regular size.

“Your father told me about your fascination with animagi.”

He nodded again, unsure what else to do, sure if he spoke he’d toss his lunch across McGonagall’s carpet.

She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a book, studying the cover for a long moment. “If you are interested in becoming an animagus, and you are prepared to put in the work of it, then I am open to becoming your mentor on the subject. Just as Dumbledore was for me.” She placed the book on the desk before him.

He had to resist the urge not to laugh. It was a copy of Releasing the Animagus Within.

“It will be a lot of work, James, but it will count as additional credit for Transfiguration, which, if I’m being perfectly honest, your grade could use some improving… Not for lack of promise on the subject, mind you, your china mice were almost as perfect as Miss. Evans was on Thursday, I was quite impressed. I feel you’re… distracted… in class.”

James turned red, knowing exactly what she was talking about. On Wednesday, he and Sirius had bewitched their mice to dancing on the desk while they’d snickered and sang The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B at them as they cha-cha’d across the table. They’d thought it a good laugh until McGonagall spotted them - having been distracted herself by Peter’s project, which had left a teacup clamped to his nose as he wailed across the room. They’d been in big trouble then and been assigned to bring extra teacups to class with them Thursday, which they’d bullied Remus into doing for them that night, then they’d each magicked a different pattern onto the china and turned them in as their own… which was why they were so much better than James’s Wednesday mice.

“Would this be something you’d be interested in?” McGonagall asked, taking James’s silence for thinking over her offer.

James hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to do. Part of him thought it was a good idea that at least one of them be correctly trained in the art of being an animagus, but then the other part said that McGonagall’s lessons would be tedious and long and probably take years. Plus, he wasn’t sure if the Draught of Change was something safe to take more than once - especially as he was still quite capable of sprouting antlers on his head at will. He couldn’t very well ask - he’d have to explain why… He stared up at McGonagall’s expectant face.

“Dunno,” he said finally, “Can I think on it?”

McGonagall studied him a moment. Finally, she nodded, though very slowly. “Yes, you may think on it.”

“Thanks,” James said. He put the teacup down on the table and he recognized it as one of Lily Evans china mice from Wednesday, now that the topic had come up. She’d made a very distinct pattern on the cups of little sunflowers with a bright yellow handle. “Can I, er, get back to class now?” he asked.

“Your quidditch game, you mean, I suppose?” McGonagall asked, eyebrow raised.

James flushed. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose.”

“You may go,” she nodded.

James slid out of the chair and hurried toward the door of McGonagall’s office. He had just opened it and was about to go through to the corridor when McGonagall called, “James?”

“Yes, Professor?” he asked, turning around to look at her.

She took a deep breath, “Don’t give up on it.”

James felt that lump rise up in his throat. He wondered how much she knew. He nodded quickly and ducked out the door.




Sirius looked up from A Joker’s Spellbook: Side-Splitting Charms and Hexes for the World’s Wittiest Wizards. The others were draped about the room with their textbooks while Sirius was studying something altogether different, which he’d decided was more important. It was from A Joker’s Spellbook that he’d gotten the charm to set the mice dancing in Transfiguration and there were loads of other spells in there he was just dying to give a try to. “The school’s been boring this term,” he announced, “With Bilius Weasley gone, it’s as though there’s a deficit of laughter about the place. We need to fill the void.”

James was staring down at the pages in the Transfiguration book about changing mice into teacups. “I wouldn’t say boring,” he said, “We’re just busier than we usually are.”

Sirius tossed the book to the end of the bed. “Look at you lot!” he said, “Homework on a Tuesday night! Nothing we’ve been assigned is due until next week. You lot are terrible at procrastination.” He frowned. “C’mon, we’ve done hardly anything fun. We haven’t even looked at the map since the second day we were here.” He got up and grabbed a hold on James’s arm. “Get your invisibility cloak out, let’s go have some fun.”

James shrugged him off, “Sirius, I gotta learn this.”

Remus looked up, and so did Peter. It wasn’t like James to deny Sirius’s ideas of going to have fun so sharply. Sirius looked like he’d been stung. He looked at James’s text book. “We already finished the teacup mice, James.”

“But I didn’t learn it, we had Remus do it,” James said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather like to actually know how to do a few things when it comes time to leave this place when we graduate. I don’t fancy being an idiot all my life.”

Sirius looked at Peter and Remus, who both quickly turned back to their homework, not wanting to get in the middle of whatever it was that was about to transpire between James and Sirius. “What the bloody hell has gotten into you this evening?” Sirius demanded.

“Nothing! I’m just trying to work on something and you keep distracting me!” James exclaimed.

“I’m just trying to hang out with my best mate, is that so wrong?” Sirius shouted, “And besides, for someone who’s so put off by being distracted, you sure didn’t stop me from charming the mice. And you’re the one who started the quidditch today in Binns’s class. But yes, I’m the idiot.”

“Actually you started the game of quidditch, I was just doodling snitches on the edges of the parchment before that, and furthermore I didn’t say you were an idiot, I said that I didn’t fancy being one.”

“And it’s my fault if you are, basically, is what you were getting at!”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But it’s what you meant!”

“MAYBE IT IS!” James shouted, “Maybe it would be! You never want to study, you never want to do things the right way because bloody hell it would take too long!”

Remus looked at Peter, whose eyes were wide. “We’re um… we’ll be downstairs. We’re going to go study with Lily.” Quickly, the two of them scrambled out of the room.

James was still seething, and didn’t even react to their leaving. He continued on, “No wonder we screwed up the animagus bit - you didn’t want to take the time to do it the right way and read the theory before jumping right into doing the potion!”

“Oh so now that’s my fault, too?” Sirius snapped.

“Who else’s bloody fault would it be?” James demanded, “It isn’t as though Peter and I came up with the stupid idea!”

Sirius’s face was red, “Well bugger off then! You don’t have to continue on with it! Go read your bloody china mouse whatever the hell!” He turned and pushed his way out of the dormitory door, letting it slam shut behind him.

James chucked the Transfiguration book in the direction of the door.