The Order of Mischief I

1.8

"Potter, I want you to work with Zion." Professor Slughorn instructed, looking at his list of pupils. He was assigning a new project that they would work on for class, and he needed them in new pairs.

"Which one? There's two here. You might want to be more specific." James laughed as he spoke, encouraging the class to laugh with him. Sirius, of course, laughed the loudest.

"Ladies, decide that on your own. The other of you will work with Black." Professor Slughorn turned around and continued to looking at his attendance list before pairing more students together. Anya and Sahara looked at each other and smiled, before grabbing all their books and rushing to the sides of the men they wanted to work with, only to laugh at each other when they stood near the two best friends.

James and Sirius awkwardly watched them as the girls joined them. They were quietly laughing at each other. James suspected it was because they silently raced each other to work with them, thinking the other wanted to work with the same person. He tapped on her shoulder, "Zion."

Anya stopped laughing and looked at him, "Yes?"

"What just happened?"

Sirius was clearly eaves dropping and pretending not to, especially as he stopped moving and stared at the desk. Sahara ignored him and started flipping through her notes, comparing them to his, only to find he barely wrote anything. She was disappointed and resorted to looking through her potions text book.

Anya turned red as she spoke, "We raced to pair up with you guys, thinking the other wanted to work with one of you that we wanted to work with."

"You want to work with me?" James cockily asked, smiling at her.

She shrugged, "Well, as great as Sirius is, I do not want the content of my cauldron to explode on my face because he thought it would be funny." He laughed quietly and looked at his best friend who rolled his eyes.

"I am not that bad," Black whined as the other pair laughed to themselves.

"Quiet down now all of you!" Slughorn shouted as he looked at the pairs that were already sorted. The class fell still and silent as he continued to call out names, "Lupin, you will be working with Stevens." The Zion sisters watched as Phoebe approached their table, standing beside Remus and smiling before turning around to listen out for the other pairings, after greeting him politely.

Finally when the class was divided into pairs, Professor Slughorn looked at the students, clearing his throat with a cough, to gather their attention. He loudly declared, "These will be your partners for the rest of the academic term." A few students groaned as they recognised how lazy their partners could be. But their short-lived retaliation was quickly forgotten as Slughorn continued talking, "I want all of you to produce the cure for boils before the end of this lesson."

The class nodded, looking back at their notes from the earlier minutes and searching through the class inventory. James and Anya stared at their notes, seeing if they missed anything, and also to verify that the other knew what to do.

"Nice handwriting," Anya whispered, tracing her fingers over his writing. James nodded, before looking at her and noticing the expression of surprise on her face.

"Why are you so surprised by that?" he asked.

She smiled, "I grew up with muggles and the boys always had the worst handwritings ever, I could barely read them."

He smiled, nodding and not bothering to thank her for the compliment, he saw no need to. Instead, he continued reading her notes and admired the details in the information contained, which would make the task easier to complete to perfection. While Anya had written out the method for the potion making, James had gathered the uses and the analysis that he predicted he would need for the accompanying essay that they would no doubt be asked to write up for the theory aspect of the class.