The Little Lightning Girl

25- The Therapeutic Process of Ruining Someone's Life

Only a few days after James and I got captured, they found Professor Lavens's body, and the stash of Polyjuice potion with it. The tall man, whose name I had never learned, had created a trap door that led to a cellar beneath his bedroom in the castle.

But because the potions professor had been put... out of commission, they'd procured a temporary instructor from the ministry that everyone had hated. He was a strange bald man with a creepy smile and absolutely no knowledge of potions whatsoever. Thankfully, he'd left at the end of the year, likely due to all the trouble students caused in his class and all the pranks that had been pulled on him. However difficult it was to believe, the lady who'd replaced him was worse.

Her name was Melinda Mossear, and she was a living nightmare. Apparently, after Mcgonagall had accidentally hired a death eater, the Ministry of Magic didn't trust her to make the decisions regarding staff. It didn't matter that the death eater had actually been an excellent teacher, and even though Mossear was definitely not working towards dark magic, if you put her and Lavens side by side I'd think she was more evil. So now, in my favorite class, instead of devoting my attention to the actual work we were supposed to do, I devoted my attention towards disrupting the class to the best of my ability.

To my credit, I did give the lady a week to fix herself and her class. I gave her a chance to escape endless pranks by being a better person but she didn't take the opportunity and now the Marauders and I were going to ruin her life, or at least make it very difficult.

I pulled the first prank without telling anyone but James because it involved using my demigod abilities. I managed to slip little pockets of air under every bit of furniture she touched, and when she was least expecting, I either expanded the air or collapsed it suddenly. This resulted in a broken desk leg, a shattered cauldron, and a large tear in the pencil skirt that she wore almost every day. Since none of us had moved to perform the prank, and I'd managed to keep my face passably innocent, she didn't know who to blame. James gave me a high five under the desk when she actually screamed and spent the rest of the class standing by the chalkboard.

Later, when I revealed to the rest of the Marauders that I'd been behind the prank, they begged me to let them help with the next one. We switched between just irritating things and actually dangerous things often enough that we knew she figured it couldn't possibly be the same group of students. The second prank we pulled involved muggle technology and sneaking around after hours. Somehow, Louis charmed his way into her office and managed to put itching powder on every article of clothing in sight. He claimed to have really gone all out on her underwear drawer, but none of us believed him until Monday, when we caught her shifting uncomfortably in her chair the entire class.

I, of course, was probably the only reason we didn't get caught. During class, I finished all of my potions successfully and helped my friends do the same. It seemed that none of the other teachers had bothered to inform Mossear that her best students had a long history of trouble making. She couldn't suspect us because whenever she was near, we appeared to be perfect angels.

It was refreshing, to get back to my havoc-wreaking roots. I hadn't felt like myself for such a long time that pranking people and causing trouble with my friends was a relief. Rose and Kaley contributed to a fair number of pranks as well. Rose's cousin Lucy had been a victim of a bad break up, in which she'd seen her boyfriend kissing another girl on a romantic date. So what did we do? Created a spell that would make his lips swell enormously. Watching the boy at breakfast that day was amusing in so many ways. We didn't tell anyone it was us, because our goody-goody image was too helpful to ruin. Rose wanted to tell Lucy, but ended up deciding against it.

Kaley had started spending more time with the Marauders than usual. I was no fool, I knew exactly who she really wanted to spend time with. I'd seen the looks James had passed my blonde friend when she wasn't looking, glances filled with longing like in a sappy love story. And I'd seen her return the looks when James wasn't paying attention. It was actually rather painful to watch two people fall in love but know that neither of them thought the other was. But James, like me, was damaged. As much as we were working on healing, and we were getting better, he needed time. He couldn't become "himself" again, because he wasn't the same person as before. But he needed time to figure out who he was now, and I knew Kaley recognized that because she saw the same thing in me.