The Little Lightning Girl

3- Polyjuice or Professor

(Above is Kaley Finch, an older version)

"Why are you holding that pen in a death grip?" James asked after a good ten minutes of silence.

I shrugged and pocketed the utensil, hurriedly trying to think of a cover story, "I don't know, I was desperate."

"What do you say the three of us spend the night in here?" Albus proposed, his voice still shaky.

James and I nodded, and as if we'd asked for them, three twin beds appeared behind the couch in the otherwise empty room. I was in a pair of workout shorts and a tank top, but James and Albus were still in their school robes, and they had been provided small stacks of pajamas on two of the beds.

As it was, none of us got a wink of sleep in the next four hours. We laid in bed and waited for something to come barging into the room. Thankfully, nothing and no one did.

At seven the next morning, the three of us booked it back to our respective dormitories and got dressed just in time to make it to breakfast. I'd assumed that Mcgonagall would make some sort of announcement during breakfast about Potions being cancelled or at least postponed. But she sat up at the teachers' table and didn't seem concerned in the slightest. One look at James told me that he was just as confused as I was.  My first class was Potions, so I'd find out soon enough what the situation was.

What I didn't expect, was to walk into the classroom in the dungeons and find Professor Lavens sitting at his desk grading papers as he always was. Normally, the potions professor greeted me as I entered his classroom, and we nearly always had a short conversation about how I was doing and if I needed anything from him. But today... he did not look up from his desk. Fortunately this gave me enough time to look him over. He wore the same robes and used the same quill to mark essays. But there was something about the way that he was sitting, his posture, that put every sense I had on edge. Every bone in my body was screaming what I somehow knew to be the truth: this wasn't Professor Lavens.

He looked up at me right as I took my seat, and I knew that he hadn't seen me staring.

"Good morning, Professor," I said as amiably as I could. I couldn't help but be glad that I didn't sit in the front of the class anymore, the further I was away from this person the better. I prayed James would come to class quickly.

"Good morning Alana."

Even his voice seemed... colder somehow. Of course, though I felt certain that the person in front of me was the person who'd killed Professor Lavens last night, I had no proof other than my feelings. But it was a pretty easy conclusion to come to. James and Albus wouldn't have lied to me about what they saw, not something that was this serious.

James, Louis, Fred, and Frank arrived a few minutes after me. They never got here early. I knew James had gotten here for me and dragged his mates with him so we wouldn't have to sit alone in this room. But as well as I'd hid my surprise at finding our Potions Professor at his desk, James wasn't a great actor, his shock was clearly written on his face.

"Hi, James!" I prompted my friend into sitting down, forcing his eyes towards me and away from the... teacher.

My relief at having someone else in the room with me and the probable murderer must have been evident because James often gripped my hand under the table as we worked through the class period. Our potion had never been bad in this class before, but to say we were distracted today was an understatement.

As we left the classroom, I said loudly, "James do you mind coming to the Quidditch Pitch with me later, I want to work on some things for tryouts."

I was hoping he'd get the message that I really just wanted to talk about this situation we were in with Lavens.