The next few weeks had passed like a blur to Jessica. She and James had not resolved their small feud and were at any lengths, trying to avoid each other. There was always an awkward silence resonating from the two when they were together, and if any words were said; they were said bitterly and in an argument.

Jessica found herself disgusted with James' behavior. James spent the majority of his time hexing and pranking Slytherins and in detention with his idiotic friend Sirius. Jessica hated the fact that all of James' pranks were at other peoples' expenses, thoroughly humiliating whoever James chose to target, and usually in front of the whole school. Jessica also was annoyed that however many times James was put in detention for his rule-breaking, James would continue to joke and fool around.

James' friends also irritated her. Sirius Black seemed to be under the impression that Jessica was insane, and had told a great many people lies about her. Of course, this made Jessica mad to no end especially since James wasn't doing absolutely anything to stop it. James had also become quite friendly with two other boys by the names of Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. After talking with Remus, Jessica had to admit that he was actually quite a nice and reasonable boy, but Peter seemed like he worshipped the ground Sirius and James walked on, and that made Jessica incredibly cross.

On a happier note, Jessica had also developed her friendships with Marlene, Alice and Lily. Jessica didn't see much of Severus anymore, but held nothing against the boy and was always a little put out when James would tease him. Lily and Jessica were the closest of friends, but Jessica was always annoyed at Lily one way or another simply because of Lily's standoffish attitude. Though, Jessica couldn't deny that Lily was one of the loveliest people she had ever met.

Alice Prewett was always someone Jessica could laugh with. Alice made the funniest jokes and was always incredibly forgetful, a fact which amused Jessica to no end. Jessica found Alice to be also immensely kind; always sharing her sweets out to everyone and lending all of her belongings out, even to people she didn't like- as long as she knew they needed them.

Marlene, however, was nothing like Lily or Alice. Jessica was always shocked by Marlene's straight forward attitude. At first, Marlene had come off as a little rude to Jessica, as Marlene always told the truth- often without tact, but eventually Jessica came to realize that it was just Marlene's personality. Marlene was always there to cheer Jessica up, and mend fights between someone else and Lily. Together, Marlene and Alice were a force that left you clutching your sides with laughter for hours.

Lily however was a force that left you clutching your sides in pure agony.

Professor Slughorn cleared his throat in front the gawky first years. 'Hello there!' boomed the heavy voice of the Potions Master. 'I trust you all had an enjoyable weekend?'

There was a murmur of 'yeses' throughout the classroom, but none too enthusiastically as all of the students seemed quite tired, their eyes droopy.

'Well, then! Would you please all open your books to page thirty-three so that we may begin,' said Slughorn. With a flick of his wand, writing appeared on the dusty chalkboard. Jessica could see Lily flipping eagerly through her potion's book, and gasping as she read the page.

'Ooh, this looks interesting!' Lily gasped. 'It's a little simplistic, but I suppose it could come in handy…'

Jessica tuned out of Lily's ramblings and focused her eyes on the page. They had to make a potion on how to cure boils, and Jessica was all but pleased.

'Aren't you coming Jessica?' asked Lily, motioning towards the potions store cupboard. Jessica nodded absentmindedly and hopped out of her seat and walked over with Lily. Scooping up the ingredients in her arms, Jessica was about to walk back to her seat when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder. Jessica turned around to meet the cold, grey eyes of her brother's best friend; Sirius Black.

'Do you have a problem?' asked Jessica, seemingly polite but with a hint of malice in her tone.

Sirius just smirked back at her. 'There doesn't have to be.'

Jessica shrugged his hand off of her shoulder and put her hands on her hips. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means that if you move aside, there won't be a problem,' said Sirius, as if he was speaking to a three year old.

Jessica let out a short laugh. 'It wouldn't hurt to ask nicely, now would it?' asked Jessica mockingly.

'That was my nice side,' said Sirius, moving closer to Jessica with a grin spread out on his face.

'Well then it obviously needs improvement, doesn't it?' came Lily's voice. 'Come on, Jessica. We need to get a start on the potion-'

'I see how it is,' said Sirius, letting out a short barking laugh. 'As soon as you feels frightened, we call in carrot tops to comfort you!'

Jessica clenched her fists in anger. 'At least I don't feel the need to be rude to anything that moves!'

'Sweetheart, if you think that's being rude then we obviously need to spend more time together-'

Jessica rolled her eyes. 'Oh, save the ridiculous pick-up lines, Black. You sound like a bloody moron-'

'Pick-up lines?' interjected James, walking over to the three of them. Jessica could feel her heart pumping furiously in her chest. James ran a hand through his hair. 'Gosh, Sirius… Why would you want to go out with her?'

And as soon as Jessica's hopes for her brother were raised, they were beaten and mercilessly thrown onto a rubbish dump.

Lily scoffed loudly, causing everyone to look at her. 'No one asked for your opinion, Potter.' She grabbed Jessica by her wrist. 'Come on, let's leave these idiots to themselves... I really don't want to waste time on a bunch of stupid boys.'

Jessica smiled and nodded silently, casting one furtive look at James. For a moment, Jessica thought she saw his mouth open as if he was about to say something- but before she could be sure, his mouth was clamped shut with no sign that he had been thinking about talking to his sister at all.

After ten excruciating minutes of trying to master her potion, Jessica turned to Lily for advice.

'Lily?' asked Jessica. 'I think I've done something wrong here...'

Lily looked down unto Jessica's bubbling grey solution, a frown plastered across her face. 'Goodness, what did you do Jessica?' asked Lily, shaking her head.

Jessica shrugged. 'I'm not sure, exactly... I followed the instructions as best I could!'

Lily sighed. 'Look, just read through the instructions again and see if you did one of them wrong,' said Lily turning back to her own work. Jessica frowned. That had not been the reaction that she had been looking for...

'Can't you just help me, Lily?' asked Jessica, exasperatedly.

Lily turned to Jessica and rolled her eyes. 'Can't you just do it without me?'

'But-'

'Honestly, it's not even that hard!' spat Lily, then seemingly feeling a little guilty for her short words added, 'there's just not that much time left, you see...' She fiddled with her hands, anxiously.

Jessica huffed and muttered an incoherent 'yes' under her breath before clearing away some steam so that she could read the small printed text in her book.

Believing that there wasn't really anything that she could do to salvage her potion, Jessica just continued from the last step. This resulted in turning her potion the unfortunate colour of vomit.

Someone cleared their throat behind her, and Jessica turned to see who it was.

'Do you need some help?' asked Jessica's brother, James cautiously.

Jessica furrowed her eyebrows and crossed her arms over her chest. 'No, I am fine thank you,' said Jessica stubbornly.

James chuckled quietly. 'It doesn't look that way to me, Jessie,' he said, wafting his hand over his nose.

'I'm doing perfectly fine with it!' said Jessica, a little cross and turning back to her steaming cauldron.

James shook his head. 'It's green,' he said simply.

'So?' asked Jessica, rolling her eyes.

'Well,' said James sighing deeply, 'it's supposed to be purple.'

Jessica silently cursed as she looked back at her book and noted that James was right. The potion was supposed to be purple.

'Why are you talking to her James?' asked Sirius in a rather loud whisper. Jessica kept her head down, and pretended to be reading her Potions book, but was really listening to every word that came out of either of their mouths.

Jessica could hear James sigh behind her. 'I was just offering her some help,' he said. Jessica could picture him adding a shrug at this point.

'Why would you want to help her?' asked Sirius, letting out a short barking laugh.

'Sirius...' pleaded James. 'Mate, she's my sister!'

Jessica rolled her eyes, and viciously banged her wand on the side of her cauldron. Suddenly, the solution inside started sizzling furiously and bubbling. Steam started rising, making it hard for Jessica to see what had happened...

BANG!

Before Jessica could call the professor over for assistance, her cauldron had spat the whole potion out- covering Jessica in a disgusting green slime.

Lily let out a shriek and jumped away from her own cauldron, accidentally knocking it over in the process. What happened next came as a blur to Jessica, but the next thing she noticed was that two of her table's legs were missing and the whole class had jumped up onto their chairs, looking fearfully at Jessica.

Professor Slughorn was trying to put the class in order again from under his desk, shaking his hands wildly. 'Would everybody simply CALM down!' shrieked the Professor, over the roars of the first years. His head suddenly popped out and he pulled out his wand, instantly replacing the two legs on Jessica's desk.

'SILENCE!' boomed the Professor, vanishing the solution on the floor with one flick of his wand. He took a deep breath. 'If anyone has any of the potion on themselves, could you please come to the front?'

A large majority of the class stumbled forwards, many at that stage of the lesson in tears. Jessica meekly hopped off the chair she was crouched upon and ran forwards to the professor, her bottom lip trembling.

Professor Slughorn sighed deeply as she sauntered forward. 'Dear, dear Miss... er?'

'Potter,' finished Jessica, refusing to meet her teacher's eyes for fear she would start crying. 'Jessica Potter.'

'Ah, so you're James' sister!' said Slughorn, his tone immediately changing.

Jessica frowned, but nodded. 'Yes, he's my tw-'

'Quite a good potioneer, that James!' interjected Slughorn. 'Quite good indeed...'

Jessica cleared her throat. 'Ah, professor, do you mind?' she asked, motioning to her slime covered uniform.

'Oh, yes! Of course, Julie! How forgetful of me...' Slughorn tapped his wand on her shoulder and suddenly all the slime that had once covered Jessica had disappeared.

She smiled meekly. 'Thank you, sir. I'm really sorry fo-'

'Nonsense, nonsense!' interrupted Slughorn, waving his hand dismissively. 'Anything for James' sister! Off you go now, Jennifer!'

Jessica didn't bother correcting him, but instead ran to collect her books, arriving just in time to hear a snippet of a conversation James was having in the corner of the classroom with Sirius.

'Maybe you should have helped her, mate,' laughed Sirius, clutching his side from laughter. 'Did you see Slughorn's face? That was priceless, that was...'

James' eyes became wide, as he saw that Jessica was in hearing range. 'Sirius,' he muttered under his breath, nudging his friend in the ribs.

'What?' asked Sirius, before turning to follow James' gaze. 'Oh, it's you!' he shouted upon noticing Jessica. 'That was bloody brilliant! I wonder if I'll ever be able to fail that marvellously.'

Jessica's lips started to tremble, and she could feel tears coming on. 'Stop it,' she whispered.

'I wonder if you plan these things out... No one could really be that bad at Potions, now could they?' continued Sirius, laughing.

James turned to his friend. 'Come on Sirius, Remus and Peter will probably be waiting outside for us,' said James, pulling Sirius away and casting one, last apologetic look at his sister before running off with his friend.

Jessica sat in the classroom for some time after everybody else had left for lunch. Nobody had even waited for her while she was being cleaned up by Slughorn. Why did she have to be bad at everything that James was good as?

Jessica gathered up her books and walked down to the Great Hall, her heart heavy with shame and embarrassment.

A/N: Yeah, I know- my last update was months ago. I've just been sort of occupied because one of my friends had an accident, and has only just come out of hospital- so the past couple of weeks have been pretty stressful for me. I'm also reconsidering the rating because although this story will get really dark later on, it's not that dark right now and I think that I'll just put it down so other people can read it. I just wanted people to be warned before they read this story.

So, I didn't exactly get three reviews for that last chapter, but more like three reviews in total :P Oh well, I did get some Story Alerts so at least I know some people are interested!

Keep it up everybody :)

Love Purple 3