Hell or High Water.

𝖎𝖎𝖎. the butterfly effect

HELL OR HIGH WATER.
III.

James Potter had gotten quite used to getting detention. By that point, it was a weekly occurrence. Their pranks were way more often, of course, but not every single one of them could be traced back to him and his friends... they made sure of that.

The reason he, Sirius and Peter were in detention that time was because of a dungbomb that ended up hitting professor Sprout instead of the seventh year Slytherins they were trying to target. It was supposed to be one of the simplest pranks they had ever pulled and yet, accidents happened. The reason why their group wasn't fully present in detention was because Remus had decided to be a good student and spend his free period studying for D.A.D.A. He found it very amusing when they told him how they messed up and even more amusing when they told him they got detention.

They had been told that their detention would involve them cleaning up the Transfiguration classroom and after that, cleaning up the trophies. They had been told it would only be the three of them, which James honestly thought was fun. It would be just another normal day, then, only they would be forced to do chores as well. He didn't really mind though. They had gotten much worse detentions over the years, especially when they had someone watching over them.

The three of them were in the Transfiguration classroom, arguing over who was going to do what, when the door opened and Snape's Ravenclaw sister entered the room. All of them stared at each other in silence for a moment and she—Artemisia—looked like she was about to start crying.

"Oh, what a happy reunion," Sirius said sarcastically. "Are you here to apologize for yesterday?"

Artemisia glared at him but didn't say anything. James spent a moment noticing her, truly looking at her for the first time ever since he met her. She didn't look that similar to Snape—she was pale and had straight black hair, but that was where the similarities ended as far as he could tell. If she never told him she was his sister, James would have never guessed. She didn't look as painfully bland and boring as Snape. He thought it was quite unfair that life had given her him as a brother, out of all people.

The next thing she noticed was that she did actually look like she had been crying. Her blue eyes looked glassy and he could see it even from a distance. His first thought was that she was intimidated by them or perhaps she was still sad about the previous day's snowball incident. His smirk immediately dropped at the idea of making a girl cry.

"What are you looking at?" she interrupted his thoughts, looking at him like she was trying to make him explode with her mind. Oh, nevermind then.

His eyes widened slightly and he shrugged like a speechless idiot, letting out a huff. Just as he thought this couldn't possibly get more awkward, Peter asked the question everyone knew better than to ask in detention. "So what did you do?"

Sirius smirked and leaned against the wall. "Oh, I really want to know the answer to that," he said. "What could it be? How bad could a female version of Snape be?"

"What did you do to end up here?" she shot the same question back at them, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Threw a dungbomb at Sprout," Peter stated casually.

She scoffed, rolling her eyes. Now it was even more obvious that she was fighting back tears. James looked at his friends, but none of them seemed to notice. Was he the only one who could see the obvious? "Of course you did, you... you hooligans," she chuckled humorlessly.