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.

"I would hardly call us hooligans," James intervened. "We didn't want the bomb to hit the professor anyways. It was a mistake."

"You seem to make a lot of mistakes lately, Potter."

Something about the way she said his name didn't sit right with him. It reminded him of the way people like Snape, Mulciber and Rosier would say it—like it was an offensive word. Like they were talking to dirt. People like them treated wizards that they considered "blood traitors" almost as bad as muggleborns themselves. People like them thought James and his family were a disgrace to the wizarding world just because they didn't lead their lives with prejudice and blind hatred to anything different. Maybe he had been wrong to assume Artemisia was different from those guys.

"Okay, your turn to confess your sins now," Sirius said, clearly excited to figure out what she could possibly have done to land a detention. Truth was they'd never seen her in detention before, so it looked like it was her first time there. Maybe that was why she looked so lost, like she had no idea what to do or where to go.

"I'm not telling you, obviously," she said like it should have been clear from the beginning. As curious as he was to find out why she was there, he decided not to ask. If they were about to spend the next hours together, he thought he should try to make it as painless as possible for all of them. Her frustration towards them seemed to calm her down a little, funnily enough. "Now... what are we supposed to do here? Just... clean around?"

"It already looks pretty clean to me," James muttered as he looked around.

She raised an eyebrow and dragged her finger across one of the desks. She then looked at it, a little disgusted. "Definitely not clean," she frowned. James opened his mouth, attempting to take the reins and decide who was going to do what before the situation dissolved into chaos, but Artemisia interrupted him once again. "Do we have to talk to each other? Is this part of the punishment?" she asked and he couldn't help but think; Merlin, how did she seem to never run out of snarky things to say?

"It definitely could be," Sirius chimed in with a smile. He seemed to have the same enthusiasm towards mocking and bothering her as he did with Snivellus. His determination was almost admirable.

"I was only trying to assign each of us a task," James rolled his eyes. He couldn't resist the sarcasm that escaped his mouth. "So, you know, we could work together like you're supposed to do in detention. The faster we do it, the faster we're out of here."

She mumbled something under her breath, but didn't say anything. He took her silence as a term of acceptance.

Only five minutes later, they were all doing something to help. James was wiping off the dust off the desks, the Ravenclaw was swiping, Peter was following behind her moping and occasionally hitting her feet with his mop before squealing a little "sorry!" and Sirius was putting the objects Mcgonagall used to teach with back to the drawers. There was some level of teamwork, but the uncomfortable silence made James feel on edge. Once in a while he would look at Peter, who would shrug as if saying that they couldn't do anything about it anyways.

Whatever Archie thought detention would be like, it was definitely not that. She thought she would be spending the next hours staring at the ceiling and repeating the words of Avery and her brother again and again in her head. But truthfully, she didn't have the capacity to think about these things during detention, because she was too busy feeling annoyed by the so-called Marauders. Sirius kept pestering her to tell them what she did, Peter kept bumping into her and then acting like she was about to murder him for it and James... James kept staring at her, in a way she really couldn't figure out. She knew he hated her brother, so she couldn't help but think that he was trying to find something to hate about her as well.

She could tell they all felt really uncomfortable with the silence, but she honestly enjoyed it. There was something rather calming about doing chores and having a cleaning session. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she was back to her house. It wasn't a particularly comforting thought or anything like that, but it still felt better than suffering through interactions with the Gryffindors.

Once the first round of chores was done, they split up. Her and Sirius (a match made in hell) were assigned to organize the class's library while the other two were supposed to take care of the windows. Archie was pretty sure Sirius Black had never seen a book before by the way he looked at them, but didn't comment on it. They were supposed to sort them based on alphabetical order, but all the boy did was ignore the one instruction they had and go through the pages of each book like he was curious to see what they were about. He reminded her of a toddler. 

Archie grabbed a book from his hands and glared at him. "You have one job to do. Are you incapable of doing anything correctly?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Are you capable of doing anything else other than scowling? Is that why you're here?" He smiled fakely. "Did you scowl someone to death?"

"Right now I sure wish I had that ability."

"You really are his sister, huh?" he scoffed. "So quick-witted. And yet, so painfully boring and annoying."

She grabbed another book from his hands. "Is that why you four are so obsessed with him? Because he's boring?" she said and put it into the shelf, though by that point she was certain she had messed up the order. 

"No, it's just because he's a bigoted freak," he said.

"Sirius," she heard James' voice. She hadn't realized the other two boys had stopped cleaning the windows and were listening to them arguing. The bespectacled boy had the kind of expression that reminded Archie that he didn't stop his friends because he disagreed with him. He just did not want another argument to take place. It was too late; if anything, it was his fault for pairing the two together.

She was too furious to find the right words to say. "What?" Sirius smirked. "Do you maybe need a Wit-Sharpening potion to help you dig yourself out of this hole?" His eyes glinted with amusement as he saw the realization hit her. "Ah, yes, I did hear about the incident. Word travels fast."

"Shut your mouth," she told him. The thought of people hearing about the way she hit someone made her feel heavy. What would Lily think if she found out about it? it was the first thing she thought. She was the only person that knew about her and Severus' father after all. Would she think that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? Would she think Archie was a violent monster?

"Well, I don't blame you for what you did, that's for sure," Sirius shrugged. He seemed actually honest when he said that. "Knowing Avery, he absolutely deserved it. But you know what they say; one's friends are a reflection of them. And your brother... well, he is mates with him. So what does this say about him, huh?"

"Okay, that's enough," James said with a stern tone. "For Merlin's sake, you were just supposed to be sorting books."

To say Archie felt overwhelmed was an understatement. She really, really did not know what to do or what to say. The angry part of her, the part of her that she kept hidden from everyone including herself, wanted revenge. She wanted to throw a book at him, see him in pain, even if it was just for seconds. It seemed like lately an outburst of rage was her first instict.

That only freaked her out more.

She grabbed a book and smacked it on his hands who were already holding a Transfiguration textbook. As soon as she heard it fall to the ground, she walked out of the classroom. She had never gotten detention before, much less run out of it before it was time to do so. She could only assume that meant another one. But at that moment, she truly didn't care. All she wanted was to be alone, away from everyone; the Marauders and the Slytherins, including Severus.

"Good job, Sirius," Peter sighed as soon as the girl stormed out of the classroom and crossed his arms over his chest. "They're definitely going to blame her outburst on us."

Sirius pressed his lips into a thin line. James prided himself for being the person who knew Sirius better than anyone and in that moment, he could tell he was wondering if he had actually crossed a line. "Okay, so what?" he finally said after a while, shaking the doubt off. "Worst case scenario, we get another detention."

James rubbed his temples, a movement that certainly made him look like an exasperated father. "Do you think we should follow after her?" he asked.

"Maybe it's just me," Peter said, the sarcasm dripping from his voice, "but I don't think she'd be up for a chat right now."

James nodded. He didn't really know what to say; sure, maybe what Sirius said was uncalled for, but it was the truth. When the two of them first met Snape, their rivalry was only personal. But as the years passed, it became less about them and more about the people he chose to surround himself with. People like Mulciber, Avery, Rosier, Crouch Jr. People that were all purebloods who believed in the supremacy of purebloods and had a suspicious inclination towards dark magic. People that made other students feel unsafe.

And Sirius was definitely right about that; one's friend had always been a reflection of the person themselves. Snape could weasel his way around Lily Evans, a muggleborn, as much as he wanted to, but at the end of the day he actively chose to be friends with people with hurtful beliefs. The more the political climate of the wizarding world changed, the more James worried that those Slytherins he used to just find annoying would soon prove to be actually dangerous. And, knowing all about how cruel Sirius' family could be to their own son, he could assume nothing was too far for those people.

"I don't know, didn't she seem... off to you?" James asked. He didn't like how concerned he sounded, but if he was being honest, he had the tendency to always assume the worst even if he acted like he didn't. "Like something was wrong, even before she got here?"

"Can we stop acting all worried about Snape's sister, out of all people?" Sirius rolled his eyes. "She's just like him. People like them don't like hearing the truth, that's all."

Peter seemed like he wanted to say something, but he never did. James sighed. "Well, I guess you have a point," he said. "And we do have more important things to worry about."

All of them knew what he meant. Ever since that last full moon, Remus had been in a horrible state. He tried to play it off, but all the time he had to spend on the hospital wing took a toll on him. Christmas with his parents was always draining for him, since he always seemed worried that he might lose control and accidentally hurt them, but that year he almost did. He didn't share too much and they didn't want to push him either; all he said was that he somehow managed to break out of the chains and tried to claw his way out of the basement. Thankfully, he didn't get to, but it still was the first time he got so far. He sounded exhausted just talking about it.

Remus didn't like it when the three of them made their sympathy too obvious. He didn't like being treated as weak, even when he actually was. He didn't like being pitied and he certainly didn't like feeling hopeful only to get himself disappointed in the end.

Even so, James, Sirius and Peter had agreed that they had to find a way to help him—no matter what.

Suddenly Sirius let out a small chuckle. He kneeled down to pick up the textbook Artemisia had pushed out of his hands. Somehow the force had caused the old book to lose a few of its pages that were now scattered around on the floor. Sirius picked up one of the pages and smiled in a way that meant he had just thought of something brilliant. "I have an idea on how we can help Moony."

Peter grabbed the page out of his hands and read the headline out loud. "Animagi."

♰ this is a short chapter but oh well, its exam season. thats my excuse. hope you liked it anyway! :) one thing about sirius and archie is that both of them have no chill. that basically summarizes their entire relationship, but have some trust in me... they'll get their development. and it will be so worth it.

the butterfly effect; edmund avery making fun of archie's acne ---> the marauders becoming animagi & saving remus' life in more ways than one <3 archie is that girl, all she does is exist and she slays