The Marauders: Year Seven Part Two

Mandrakes

James and Lily ran through the castle. She was amazed how many little secret passageways he knew that cut their time travelling from McGonagall's office to the greenhouses a lot faster than it normally would be - nearly half the time. "How is it that you lot are ever late for class?" she asked, breathing a bit heavily from the running. 

"Because we know we can make it in half the time and we sleep in," James laughed. He stood looking up at the greenhouses with a raised eyebrow. "Alright, where to start...?" 

None of the other students had made it to the green houses yet. Minnie's tip had proven a valuable step up - if they could figure out where the scrolls were hidden among the six green houses and rows upon rows of plants. Gigantic, leafy things with vines that could grab, or mouths that could bite, or whose touch could give you hives so that you were sprouting pus for the rest of the term...

"Well, I s'pose starting at the beginning is best," James decided with a shrug, and they headed for Greenhouse No.1, James holding open the door as they ducked inside. 

The green houses were hot, even in the winter, the air thick with humidity from the rainclouds that Professor Sprout had magicked to hang over the plants. A light drizzle fell from them as they rumbled quietly, misting the plants constantly. Lily looked around, trying to spot the scrolls or some place that Urquart and McGonagall might've hidden them. They passed a pot of ivy that was shaking the rain from itself, and a bit of Devil's Snare attempted to grab onto James's wrist as they passed it, but Lily quickly fought it off. 

They finished looking through the first green house with no luck. 

"I wonder how Rey and Sirius are doing?" James worried as they ducked out of the first green house.

It was very cold feeling outside - even more so now that they'd gone into the warmth of the green house, and Lily shivered as they walked. "I suppose it depends if Remus wants to win or not," Lily answered. "If he wants to win, I'm sure they've found at least one or two scrolls by now, knowing how much of a genius he is at stuff like this... If he wants you to win, he's probably let Sirius lead the way."

James laughed, "Hard to tell with Remus. I know he wants Sirius to apologize to Regulus nearly as much as I do, but..." He paused, holding open the door to Greenhouse No.2 for Lily, "He's also very, very competitive. Weirdly so when it comes to games. Once, he flipped a chessboard over with this big production of a fake sneeze..." James laughed, eyes sparkling, "He's never confessed it was on purpose, to this day."

Lily looked surprised, "That doesn't sound like Remus. He seems so innocent."

James chuckled, "Yes, doesn't he, though...?"

Lily said, "Far more innocent than you or Sirius. Nearly as innocent as Peter."

"Yeah, Peter's probably the most innocent of us. Poor Pete. We corrupt him something terrible." James stopped talking as they came up to a table covered with the ear muffs used by second years to re-pot the mandrakes, laying in a scattered mess on a table in a vestibule just through the door. A big poster illustrated a wizard knocking over holding a mandrake baby high in his fist. CAUTION: USE HEADSETS AT ALL TIMES WHILE WORKING WITH MANDRAKES, the sign read.

Lily's face lit up, "EAR MUFFS!"

"What?" James asked. He'd been about to make fun of the face the poor bloke in the poster was making - the illustrator had taken some liberties, he reckoned, about what hearing a mandrake would make a fella feel, and had chosen to draw the wizard's face in a contorted expression somewhere between agony and seasickness.

"Professor McGonagall said that it was cold out and you ought to wear earmuffs when you went for a walk through the green houses!" Lily said, and she plucked up a pair of the earmuffs from the table, waving them at James.