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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Ten: Detention III

When I came back to Greenhouse 4 the next day around the same time a new list lay on the first workstation. Next to it I found the lower section of the one I had worked off of yesterday. The little facts about the plants and creatures were apparently mine to keep. I folded that piece of parchment and put it in my bag.

Then I unfolded the new list.

To Do – Day 2

Behind the bumblebush by the desks you’ll find a door. I houses the supplies and tools. It’s not locked, grab whatever you need.

One table over is a stack of books that tells you what you need to know about the various plants and animals.

Feed the Abtu in the river

Check elderly mandrakes for signs of life (or death)

Water nettles, beets and tea (green, white and black)

Cut eight branches of Dittany

Wear gloves !!! and collect Streeler slime.

The Chameleon Potion is a very advanced one but it is one of the most powerful ways of disguise. In contrast to polyjuice potion which lets the drinker only turn into one person, of whom a ‘piece’ is required as an ingredient, which poses its own risks and obstacles, the Chameleon potion enables the drinker to practically become a metamorphmagi for at least two hours after consumption.

Nettles, beets and tealeaves (fresh or dried) are basic ingredients in a lot of potions. Nettles are mostly used in healing potions to provide the best starting points for the more magical ingredients. Not a single common healing potion is brewed without nettles! Beets are mostly used for colour in cosmetic applications. White, Green and Black Tea all have different properties that are released when put in hot water. Those properties often react with more magical plants like devil’s snare or moon dew to bring the potion to full potential.

When dittany is boiled and reduced, then combined with liquid silver it becomes a paste that is a very powerful cure against werewolves bites, called Lykoiaomai. This is the full recipe: Boil and reduce dittany leaves, strain the liquid to rid it of all solids and stir it into a liquid but slightly cooled silver. The ratio is one tablespoon of liquid silver to five tablespoons of dittany reduction.

When dried over a moderate flame Streeler slime turns into thin transparent gelatinous sheets, that can be dissolved in hot water. Dissolve the sheets in white tea as a cure for sleep deprivation.

Again, with the factoids… While the last ones seemed random these appeared to be a little more tailored to my situation. Mainly because of the werewolf and sleep deprivation. Full moon would be tomorrow. All of the Gryffindor boys would be completely destroyed on Thursday, if I could find dried sheets of Streeler Slime in Slughorn’s shelves, I might just take them to see whether they worked as well as pepper up potion.

While Sirius was right and there were no side-effects to using the potion it was pretty hard to get a hold of and expensive to buy. If the giant slugs provided an alternative I could see myself nicking some jars of their slime before detention was over. It would be helpful to the boys and to Crick and me. Just yesterday the next month of nightshifts had been figured out and I was serving at least one a week, not one on the weekends. Crick had had a similar fate while Jonas got way too many Saturdays to his name. Anything that would get me through a day of classes after a nightshift was absolutely worth breaking the rules for.

On the other hand, Sprout had never once said that I wasn’t allowed to take anything from the greenhouse. Obviously I could assume that nothing was to leave the treehouse but nobody had officially forbidden it.

I got to work and finished a bit quicker than the day before. One of the mandrakes didn’t react to anything I did to it, so I assumed it to be dead and put it on the table with a note. I thought it smart to let everybody know that I wasn’t sure what a dead mandrake looked like. Just in case this one was just really old and moved so slowly I didn’t realise it. The last thing I needed was to get in trouble while serving detention.

After I placed the dittany branches on top of the books I walked back into the shed and looked through the Potions section. I found two interesting things: There were a lot of sheets of Streeler slime and there were about 12 glasses of Dittany-Silver-Paste. They were labelled with dates. All of which lay in the future. One of which was tomorrow.

I had thrown myself in a homework marathon yesterday night and written my essay on the significance of Venus in relation to death for the Thursday class. Normally I couldn’t be bribed to research astronomical deteails outside of class or homework. It was one of those subjects whose importance to general magical education I understood – unlike divination – but I really wasn’t all that interested in it. Yesterday however, I had broken out my moon chart for the decade and checked the dates of full moons. I had made a list and pinned it into my wardrobe, just so I was prepared for a weak and sickly looking Remus and a grumpy Potter-posse. Aside from that, I had a feeling that the other boys were stupid enough to hang out with Remus after he had transformed and I wanted to be able to run to their rescue when something happened.

The dates on the glasses of anti-werewolf-bite-cream were all full moon dates. Seeing how Remus didn’t need a specific potion to be healed, even if he bit himself, because he already was a werewolf and didn’t get affected by the poison in his own fangs, the existence of all of these jars seemed to proof my theory that my stupid, stupid friends did regularly lounge with a transformed werewolf. And that the school knew.

While making these observations I found one glass with a December date. The 26th, to be exact. Remus would have been with his parents during the holidays, so this one went unused. Then, again, I doubted that every other jar of this stuff had been used. Did it maybe spoil quickly? Maybe, but not very likely. There were jars labelled for next November. I went back out into the bright garden and checked the special edition book on uncommon healing potions. I had a section Dittany, the recipe for the cream and stated that it was good for roughly ten years.

So, maybe the teachers relabelled the jars after every full moon that went well. I could safely assume that every single one of these jars was good to go in case of an emergency. And that it would be for couple of years. After all Remus had only started school five and a half years ago. And I doubted, that we had more than one werewolf on campus.

I struggled with my conscience and I didn’t feel good about it. But I went back into the shed, ripped the label off the December jar and put it into my bag. Just in case I really needed to run to anybody’s rescue. When I left I felt really guilty but I also reckoned I could talk myself out of the situation if it ever came to light.

We were all pretty nervous on Wednesday. It was our first full moon. And even though we weren’t going to actually be around Remus during the night, all of us girls were hyper aware of Remus’ bad shape and what would happen at night. I was glad that we went on revising spells in Charms class that morning. That way nobody noticed how little I could concentrate. Transfiguration went fairly well, too, as it was a theoretical class and I only needed to write down notes. I did, however, pull myself together to write them completely, detailed and legible because Milla was an absolute wreck at this point. Yes, her feelings for Remus weren’t influenced by the fact that he was a werewolf but the thought of every bone in his body breaking horrified her for him. Her voice was shaky all day and it sounded like she could start crying any second. Needless to say that she didn’t take any notes at all during McGonnagal’s monologue.

“Please, keep me away from Remus!”, she begged when we crossed the foyer for lunch. “Or at least don’t let me talk to him. He already looks like death and I don’t think my state would help that at all.”

“Sure thing. We’ll distract him.”

We did. Quite successfully. By now the others knew what my detention consisted of exactly and I decided to tell the entire group about my recent venture into thieving.

“Point is, that I have that stuff. I don’t hope you’ll ever need it but in all honesty if you should ever need it, it’s probably better if you have it with you rather than it sitting in my night stand”, I whispered while smoking.

“You stole Slughorn’s supply from a restricted area of the school? You sure you’re still you, Goods?”

“Fairly certain, yeah. Honestly, I’d rather lose my badge and serve detention for the next two years, than live through the nightmare of something happening to any of you.”

“I’m with Jette”, Remus agreed strongly. Well, as strongly as he possibly could. Milla was right, saying he looked like death. His skin was basically see-through and the dark circles under his eyes nearly reached his upper lip.

“I’m not myself. What if I do bite one of you?”, his voice got a little shaky and I had the distinct impression that that had nothing to do with his physical condition.

“You haven’t yet, Remus”, James tried to calm him down, with a pad on the shoulder.

“First time for everything”, Remus half-smiled in response.

“Just take it!”, I shoved the jar in Peter’s hands. “If you never need it, I’ll be heavenly happy, but if you do need it and don’t have access to it I’ll kill myself over it. And so will Remus. So, don’t argue!”

We sent them off to their classes and descended to the dungeons to learn something or other about fever-reducing-potions. Blair took care of her cauldron that she shared with Millla and the one that Chloe and Nica were supposed to brew in, while Joe was absolutely on his own with ours. I’d told him that I wasn’t on my A-game and could barely concentrate and being the wonderful person he was, he took it upon himself to just do the potion on his own, allowing me to lift. I had to promise that I’d help him out in Defence, though. And I was more than willing to pay that price.

When I got to the treehouse that afternoon I was met by Professor Slughorn. Oh. Not good.

“Miss de Witt. How nice. I thought it useful to talk you through some of the ingredients we have you collect and store. While I’m aware that Professor Sprout provided you with the books and some additional information, I’d like for you to know a little more. You up for it?”

“Certainly, Professor.” Maybe he hadn’t noticed that I nicked his December jar.

“Very well. We will get to the Dittany you collected yesterday. First, you should feed the animals. I’ll set up over there.” He pointed at the tables and pulled out a collapsible cauldron. I scanned my list for the day that just told me to feed the fish and lay out some hay for whatever other creature. I did both those things, visited the mandrakes, who were all still alive and returned to the table.

The Dittany branches were already in the cauldron and a shimmery, shiny substance sat atop a different fire. Shimmery, shiny and silver. Maybe he had noticed that I nicked the jar.

“Now, I’m sure you can guess what we’re doing today.”

“The potion – paste – that Professor Sprout wrote about. The one that heals werewolf bites?”

“Excellent. Five points to Hufflepuff.”

“Oh, thank you, Sir.”

“Now, I’m aware you don’t like potionmaking all that much. Contrasting your brother, who is still doing brilliantly.”

“Happy to hear that, Sir.”

“But with your strong suit being Defence against the Dark Arts, I don’t think that it would be crazy to assume you at least think about working in theat field. I would favour you for an auror but obviously you might end up a curse breaker, a member of the department for magical law or a dejinxer at St. Mungo’s. Every single one of these professions is connected to potions and potionmaking in one way or another. And if you’d ever want to apply to the auror training programme you need to have achieved an A at least in your NEWTs. So, I thought we’d try to install some interest in you by meeting here every now and again during your detention to work on interesting and practical potions. Would you be okay with that?”

“Of couse, Sir. Thank you. This is probably the best opportunity anybody has ever gotten by getting detention.”

“Well, I personally don’t agree with your actions, Miss de Witt. But I also don’t agree with those of my own students.” I had fully forgotten that Slughorn was Slytherin Head of House.

“What Messrs Black and Mulciber said and did does not represent my house. I trust you know that. And I don’t want you to miss opportunities over a throw-away nasty comment.”

“Thank you, Professor. I appreciate that. A lot. A whole lot.”

“Let’s get to work then.”

He went through the recipe and one or two tricks that could help me when brewing the thing myself. At the end we had produced four more of the jars. Three of them Slughorn put on his shelves, one he gave to me.

“I’d guess you won’t need it anytime soon. But it keeps nearly forever, so it won’t hurt to keep it for emergencies in whatever field you chose to work. And now that you know how to brew it and should wish to practice again, you can always ask me for the ingredients or supplies. I would have to supervise your use of them. You’ll understand that I don’t want you to take the silver for making jewellery. “

“Completely.” Frankly, I didn’t understand anything that was going on but I ran with it. By this point I was one hundred percent certain that Slughorn had noticed the theft. Otherwise he’d not have said that I could ask him for more of the potion. I thought he’d be mad at me but since he wasn’t I had to conclude that he knew about Remus’ condition and my friendship to him.

When Slughorn dismissed me it was pitchblack outside. I quickly looked up. The moon hadn’t fully risen yet, but it was definitely visible. According to our DADA material the transformation didn’t happen until the moon had done exactly that. Full rise and full moon. I imagined that the boys had already eaten and were on their way to wherever they hid during these nights. They’d gone so far as to tell us that there was a hideout but not where it was.

My steps quickened as I crossed the lawn. Suddenly, the lights from the castle’s windows seemed very far away. How fast did the moon rise? How far away from the castle was the hideout? Did the boys get there in time for the transformation? I quickened my steps. I started jogging. I did not want to run into Remus tonight. Absolutely not. Nope.

“Goods!” I stopped. Turned around.

“Sirius?”

“What are you still doing out here? Moon’s nearly risen.”

“Why d’you think I’m running?” I couldn’t spot any of the other boys.

“Oh… are you scared of the big bad wolf?” Sirius smug smirk appeared on his lips.

“I thought I already told you that I’d rather not run into a transformed werewolf. So, yeah. I love Remus, I do, but …”

“You don’t want to share his fate.”

“Well, no I don’t. And I’d rather not die, either.”

“Fair enough. No need to be scared, he’s already where he’s supposed to be.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“Forgot you wonder potion in the dorm… We have a fairly established routine for nights like these. And your stupid jar, is not yet part of it. But Remus insisted I get it.” I swung my backpack from my back to my chest and opened it.

“What are you doing?” I handed him the new jar of dittany and silver.

“Slughorn was at detention. He must have noticed that I stole one of the jars and taught me how to brew it. I got to keep one. Fully legal this time.”

“What kind of detention is that? I only ever get to clean things or write the same sentence over and over again.”

“Haven’t quite worked that out yet. But it seems to have some kind of deeper meaning. Slughorn said that he’d stop by more often during detention to teach me potions. The useful kind that I might enjoy brewing. He said it’s to help me get into the auror programme but I don’t know whether I should believe that.”

“Curious” Sirius looked up at the dark sky. “I gotta run.”

“Right… Hug Remus for me, yeah?” Sirius tilted his head. He didn’t look impressed with that suggestion.

“Or tell him I’m hugging him mentally.”

“Will do.” He was ready to head back to where he had come from.

“And be careful, you hear?”

“You worried about me?”, again he smirked at me.

“Yes, Sirius, I am. About all of you. Including Remus. So, be careful and not arrogant or heroic or Merlin knows what. Okay?”

Sirius came a little closer and studied my face.

“Nothing will happen, Goods. We’ve done this for a while now. We know what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, right because it’s such a common practice to ru…”

“Nothing”, Sirius interrupted me “will happen to any of us. I promise.” He gave me that look that made one feel like he uncovered the deepest and darkest secrets of one’s soul.

“Fine. Fine, fine. Run off, then.” I pushed him against his shoulders to give him some momentum.

“Get something to eat you worried Goodie-two-shoes”, Sirius grinned as he ran back into the blackness of the grounds.

I continued on my way to dinner, slower than before, but distinctly more concerned. He could promise me that they’d be fine a million times, I would never fully believe that none of them took unnecessary risks. That was in their blood. They were inherently adventurous. To the point of stupidity. This was going to be a long night. I doubted I’d get any sleep at all.

Entering the Great Hall and spotting Milla, Blair, Chloe and Nica I realised that none of us would sleep. We’d all be awake all night assuring one another that the boys would be fine. Although none of us were sure about that.

#james potter #remus lupin #marauders fanfiction #marauders era #original character #sirius black #harry potter #peter pettigrew #james & peter & remus & sirius

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

Text

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Ten: Detention II

In comparison to Saturday the Sunday was pretty bland. After breakfast the boys shuffled off to deal with James and make plans for the full moon that was coming up which gave us girls some time to ourselves. Snuggled up in blankets around the fire place we chatted about Milla’s date while I was working through my mountain of homework from the last week. I was looking forward to not having to do these enormous study-sessions anymore. It was good to be back with my friends.

At dinner I had told Professor Sprout that I would like to serve my first detention before dinner and handed her a copy of my schedule for the day. She wanted to get back to me.

By the first lesson of Monday morning she hadn’t yet. But after we spent some more time with the flitterbrick-nodules for two hours and were covered in some blackish goo, the rest of the class was dismissed to get cleaned up and hurry for potions, while I got called to Sprouts desk.

“Jette, I expect you to enter the greenhouse after your last class. Charms if I’m not mistaking?”

“You aren’t.”

“Professor Flitwick assures me that he’ll be ending the lesson by four o’clock sharp. You’ll have enough time to get changed into some old clothes that can get dirty and an apron and grab your gloves, work through your list and make it to dinner at a reasonable time. I understand you have a prefect meeting at half eight?”

“I do, Professor.”

“If you concentrate during detention it shouldn’t be a problem to get there in fresh clothing. Any questions?”

“The to do list will be there?”

“Yes, I’ll put in on the first desk.”

“And then I wondered, whether the other professors know that I’m supposed to be in Greenhosue 4, madam.”

“Well, yes they do. But I got this, nonetheless.” She handed me a parchment with her signature allowing me to enter the bespoke greenhouse during the next two weeks.

“Thank you, Professor.”

“You’re welcome. Now, hurry to clean up. Professor Slughorn knows that you’ll be running a little late, no need to worry about that.”

“Thank you, Professor”, I said again, weakly smiled at her and left Greenhouse 3.

Cleaning up the goo took longer than I had expected and I arrived in the dungeons with a solid twenty minute delay. I knocked and entered. Professor Slughorn smiled and pointed at an empty chair next to Black without saying anything.

Single lessons in Potions were usually fairly boring. We discussed the characteristics of brews and ingredients or went through complicated recipes. Today, as I could tell from the notes on the blackboard, we busied ourselves with potions that were used in other potions. Three were written out on the board. I’d have to ask Blair for notes after class and copy them.

“Now, when we talk about using the properties of one potion in another one of the best examples is the wound-healing-potion. One of the ingredients in that brew is essence of murtlap”, he pointed at the middle recipe on the board “which itself is brewed. While the recipe is very straight forward – boiling water, murtlap tentacles and nettle leaves – it’s the curing time that makes this one a little annoying.” I scanned the board. The curing time for essence of murtlap was three months. The potion was to be heated up once every twenty-eight days and otherwise just remained in the cauldron. After the trhee months (eighty-four days to be exact) the potion was to be strained twice and was ready to use.

“As you can see one cannot whip up any potion that calls for essence of murtlap out of the blue. Just throwing the ingredients in the healing potion will make it purple water, not an effective liquid. This means one needs to always be stocked on essence of murtlap in the ingredient cabinet or one needs to know when the healing potion is needed to buy the essence.

This combination of potions is also a nice example of two brews strengthening each other. Essence of murtlap on its own is very soothing to fresh and old wounds but it doesn’t speed up the healing process. Healing potion without essence of murtlap is basically a variation on Skele Gro which is used to regrow bones. The variation is not as strong as the original recipe for Skele Gro but can be used to regrow bones. Put both of these brews together and you have yourself a strong healing potion that can heal anything from a cut in your skin to a third degree flesh wound.

A lot of potion recipes use other potions to strengthen or alter the effects. Page 258 in your book. Please read the first two paragraphs now. We will discuss them in two minutes.”

For a theoretical potions lesson this one was really interesting. I had not been aware of the possibility of combining potions to create completely new ones. And the examples Slughorn had given were extremely useful as well. Nevertheless I was glad when I got to head to lunch.

Mondays were always full of theoretical lessons. After lunch we went over our essays about weaknesses and strengths in Defence against the Dark Arts, had a physics module in Mugglestudies and we revised the wand motions and incantations for the Banishing, Levitation, Mending, Fire Making and Cheering Charms. Before letting us go, Flitwick threatened to have us revise the Summoning, Tickling, Shrinking, Locking and Un-locking charms next Monday. Hooray.

Quickly waving at the other girls I rushed downstairs to change into a pair of ripped jeans, I usually reserved for days I wasn’t feeling like putting on joggers, and the oldest jumper I could find. I grabbed my herbology apron and dragon skin gloves, checked for the key around my neck, packed some parchment and viles in my back pack, put on my coat and left for the greenhouses.

In the courtyard I found my friends smoking. Remus looked bad. The full moon was only two nights away. One smoke couldn’t hurt, I decided and joined them for a couple of minutes that were spent asking Milla and Remus when they’d stop being awkward around each other. I didn’t hear their answer, but judging by my experience with Magnus and Chloe it would take them at least a month to be fully comfortable with their new situation. We would have a lot to laugh and giggle.

James didn’t act any different than usual, I realised as I stomped through the icy snow covered grass to end my school day where it had started. He either was a brilliant actor or the other boys had calmed him down sufficiently. His exiting the prefects’ lounge – however tame it was in comparison to how Sirius would have no doubt done it – was completely out of character. James usually didn’t get mad or storm off. He got annoyed and displayed his superiority. For him to basically admit defeat and flee was just weird. That had probably fuelled our concern for him. But this morning at breakfast and now he’d been his cheery, slightly arrogant self.

Chloe hadn’t been with the others. Usually, she went with us to meet the boys and opties to hang with Mag in the common room. But then again, she had spent all of Sunday with us and maybe she just needed some alone-time with him. I smiled to myself. Merlin, was I glad that the whole Crick-thing hadn’t left a lasting impression on their relationship.

I looked up. In front of me I found Greenhouse 1, used for teaching the first, second and third years. I knew that Greenhouse 2 was to its right and reserved for the seventh years and Greenhouse 3 lay right behind it. I’d been there this morning. Greenhouses 5 and 6 were mainly storage units that housed the plants not currently used in any of the lessons and were located behind the seventh year glass box. Had I ever actually seen Greenhouse 4?

I walked up to number three, hoping I’d find my destination behind it, but was disappointed. The herbology section was furthest away from the castle because of all the different sunlight requirements of the plants. Any closer to the castle and its various shadows would have killed half of the study material. I always thought that the sixth greenhouse was backed up right against the grey stone wall that framed the east side of the grounds but now that I walked around here, I found that it wasn’t. Between the building and the wall was a small path that looked like lead to a grove of trees I’d seen before. The oaks stood in the middle of the herbology section and provided shadow to those plants who needed it. Fairly frustrated I was about to walk back to the main path to carry on looking for my detention location when I spotted a pretty battered sign saying “Greenhouse 4” with an arrow that pointed to the oaks. Worth a try.

I squeezed myself between the wall and building – which just worked and had me wonder how Professor Sprout and her impressive circumference ever managed to do it – and ended up in the oak grove. I did two 360 degree pirouettes in looking for a greenhouse but couldn’t find it. Next I checked the walls of greenhouses 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 for more weathered signs and actually found one nailed to the trunk of the biggest oak. The arrow on it pointed upwards. What?

I rolled back my head and scanned the canopies. A lot of leaves, a lot of branches, some probably freezing doves but nothing… a shimmer. Halfway between the top of the smallest and the tallest tree I saw something reflect the last bit of sunlight. Head still in my neck I changed my position several times until I was absolutely sure that the reflection was glass. Walking a little further around the oaks I could make out a right angle in the sparkles. Glass walls in the trees.

Since I’d started at Hogwarts four and a half years ago I’d been fascinated and flabbergasted by a couple of architectural aspects of the school: the medieval aesthetic, the charmed ceiling of the Great Hall, the moving staircases, the singing suits of armour. But this definitely took the cake. A barely visible treehouse. Literally, a house in the tree that was probably also used to grow trees. I loved magic. The question was how I would get in. The key I’d been given was obviously for a door and I couldn’t reach the house. I wondered whether I simply needed to fly up there by broom or whether there was a nifty hidden entrance in one of the trees. I tried a Revelio charm on the trunk of the big oak but nothing happened. I threw the charm in all directions just in case and the smallest tree made a noise. A very subtle ‘click’ that I would not have heard in the summer, when the birds chirped like there was no tomorrow. But with only the cold doves around the sound was clearly audible. A door had become visible in the trunk, only a few centimetres taller than me. No lock. I tried pushing it to no avail and then went for my wand again. “Alohomora.”

The bark completely disappeared and gave way to a spiral staircase carved out of wood. While I climbed them I wondered how in the name of Merlin’s left saggy ball anybody ever heard about Greenhouse 4. The rumour that students weren’t allowed in it was probably as old as the school itself but if it had always looked like this, hidden away in the trees, nobody would have ever known that it existed. Sure the numbering gave it away, but that was just stupidity on the teacher’s part. Call the other buildings one, two, three, four and five, make this one six and nobody would ever even think about thinking about number four. But maybe it was just like the prank with the pigs being let lose. Paint the numbers one, two and four on three pigs let them lose at a farm and enjoy everybody looking for number three. Knowing the antics of current and previous Hogwarts headmasters, that was definitely an option.

The staircase was lit by floating glass orbs that contained fire and followed me up, encasing me and my surroundings in an angelic glow. Contrary to every other staircase I had ever seen at Hogwarts there were no paintings, decorations, inscriptions or carvings to be found around it. It was just wood. All of it.

It took me forever to reach the end of the stairs, that had started swaying the higher I got, but when I did, I stood opposite a fairly gigantic ebony black door with golden bolts and a golden lock. I pulled out the key from underneath my jumper – my coat had been in the backpack since step number 32 – and put it in the lock. Perfect fit.

Opening the door I was met with the sweet scent of a flower field in June and a lot of chirping and splashing and rustling. What I saw took my breath away. Greenhouse 4 was not a greenhouse. It was an oasis for flora and fauna alike and looked like a clearing in a fantastical forest. The floor was mainly covered in dark green moss on which four desks were placed. These desks looked like they had grown out of the moss. Less like carved and glued furniture, more like shrubs that organically grew into the practical shape of a worktable.

the desks were right off to the left side underneath one of the enormous windows, that seemed to be held up by nothing. No frames, no bolts, no handles, no metal, no wood. Nothing. I suspected that each wall was one giant sheet of glass that was magically attached to the sheets that made up the floor, other walls and ceiling, as well as the tree. During the day – or the summer – the light here at the desks would be blindingly bright, so you could perfectly work without having to deal with the shadows of the plants. Now, however, as the last sunlight in which I had spotted the treehouse was long gone, a slightly dimmed, small sun had emerged in the centre of the workstations to illuminate them. The rest of the greenhouse was lit by light yellow light, the origin of which I couldn’t make out. It was a stark contrast to the dusk outside though.

At each of the walls there were flower beds and the likes housing an uncountable amount of plants, from the far right corner of the huge structure flowed a stream of crystal clear water to the left corner by the door. Some of the splashing I’d heard upon entering came from there. What looked to me like miniature koi fish swam in it and jumped out occasionally. At the back wall trees and shrubs hat grown into an impressive grove of their own and I assumed all the birdy chirping came from the nests hidden away there.

It took me some time to adjust to my new – and warm! – surroundings, but once I shook my state of awe I walked over to the nearest desk and found a folded parchment with my name on it.

To Do – Day 1

Behind the bumblebush by the desks you’ll find a door. It houses the supplies and tools. It’s not locked, grab whatever you need.

One table over is a stack of books that tells you what you need to know about the various plants and animals.

Feed the Abtu in the river

Check elderly mandrakes for signs of life (or death)

Cut Gillyweed and seal in jar

Provide bucket of maggots to Snidgets

Wear gloves !!! and collect Streeler slime.

Abtu are small fish that give off rays of light, looking like soft sunlight. The school has a school of them because their scales can be used in gloves and clothes worn by miners or the goblins deep within the Gringotts vaults.

The scales of an Abtu do never seize to shine.

After reaching maturity the cry of a mandrake gets less and less deadly. Mandrake root and Leaves are vital ingredients of various potions and creams. Most require young Mandrakes, but some require dead ones. Should you find dead Mandrakes, please place them on the third desk in their pots. We are in the process or persuading Professor Slughorn to brew a badge of Chameleon solution and the dried leaves of dead Mandrake are essential to that.

Gillyweed can be used to breath under water when kept in freshwater and without exposure to air. Cut it off and pull the jar under the water, then close it.

Snidgets are a very rare species of birds. The school’s been providing a safe habitat for them for the past 62 years. They just need to eat.

Streeler slime is used in the making of Veritaserum and various poisons and healing potions. In its purest and freshest form it can put a person in a coma within 1.3 seconds. It’s never been deadly on its own.

Check off every task you have performed and leave the list on the desk. Have fun and good luck.

P. Sprout

I read the list two times. Why would she give me snippets of information but not tell me everything I needed to know. What did Abtu eat? Cool fact about the glow-in-the-dark scales but how was that important to the task of feeding them?

Why tell me what mandrakes are used for or what potions she wanted Slughorn to brew, instead of telling me how to distinguish an old sleeping mandrake from a dead one? Why did she include the sections on Gillyweed and Snidgets at all? Did that say bucket of maggots? Why did it not say if they were alive or dead?

Why did she have me collect coma-slime?

While wondering about these things I went over to the next table and rummaged through the books. To my delight they were more old-timey workbooks or magazines and not the thousand page encyclopaedias I knew from the library. The one on Abtus was basically a four page guide to keeping the little fish and nothing more. I scanned the brochure and discovered that Abtu mainly fed on tadpoles and scarabs. Per fish one feeding should be one scarab or three tadpoles. All right. I went over to the bustling bumblebush that was covered in neon blue cherries and found a modest door, like the parchment had suggested.

The room behind it was lit by more fire orbs and looked like any old garden shed, only way bigger. One of the cabinets said FEED on it and as I opened it I saw a well organised and labelled system of drawers. Scarabs and tadpoles were right beside each other and because I didn’t like the thought of killing little baby frogs I took out the scarab drawer. The beetles were clearly alive – they moved their eyes and heads – but had just as clearly been hit with a leg locking curse. I assumed the curse also worked on wings.

Armed with the drawer of the undead insects I strolled over the moss to the river and estimated the amount of tiny koi in the river. I tossed three hands of scarabs in and watched fully fascinated as the tiny tame looking fish exposed razor sharp teeth with which they cracked the beetles’ exterior hard shelled skeleton. Creepy little things.

Back at the cabinet I put away the scarabs and screeched when I opened the drawer labelled “Maggots”. Instead of a neat little drawer this was basically a washing machine filled with loads of yellow-ish moving rice. Yuck! I put on my gloves, found a copper bucket and a big ladle and started scooping the disgusting little things. The thin book on Snidgets – that were apparently the original golden snitches from Quidditch, who’d have known – only ate once every three and a half weeks but were like a bottomless whole then. So, I filled the bucket to the brim and walked over to the little assortment of trees and shrubs, where I put it down. As soon as my hands had left the handle about fifteen feathery golden balls of fluff dove down from the tree tops and attacked the buckt. With delighted chirping they hacked away at the squiggling mass and I went back into the shed to look for knives and mason jars.

I found both in a cupboard with the sign WATERDWELLING on it, neatly placed under yet another label that read “Gillyweed”. Cutting and preserving the algea-esque plant was fairly boring.

Before I went about my last task for the day I opened the last book again: Snakes and Slugs in Soothing Somethings by Clara Abernathy. The chapter on Streelers was very long but it had a detailed description of how to collect the slime. Abernathy advised me to never try and get the slime off the pig-sized slug directly. Thank Morgana, I was not going to pet a disgusting slug that could easily reach my waist. Instead, I was instructed to conjure black light and look for fluorescent traces on the ground, trees and walls. Those were the slime I could collect. Just like Professor Sprout, she made a point of the necessity of wearing gloves and suggested old jam glasses as containers.

With my gloves back on my hands I went into the shed. At the very back of it were some shelves with labels in a different handwriting. As I got closer I realised that this was Professor Slughorns section. The shelves had vials and glasses and every other sort of container, filled with weird looking substances and empty. I grabbed a couple and went for my wand.

My spell to kill all the lights worked only partially. While the little sun by the desks experienced its own solar eclipse without a moon, the rest of the room stayed just as bright as before. It took me a moment to realise that the light came from the sharp toothed Abtu in the river and that they would not stop.

Mildly irritated I threw some black light around the room and found a decent amount of bluish white glowing slime traces. To my surprise the slime wasn’t sticky at all and I could easily scoop it up with a cake-server I had found earlier.

Abernathy had mentioned in her soothing book that the slime was to be kept in the darkest place possible – the back wall of the shed – and so I labelled the seven jars myself and put them back on the shelf they had come from.

Every mandrake I checked was still very much alive – if not kicking – and so I checked off the list, cleaned off my apron and gloves in the little sink in the shed, dried them with the spell I usually used on my hair, put on my coat, took in the view of the greenhouse and the grounds one more time, left, locked the door and began my descend into the normal world again.

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #harry potter #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Ten: Detention I

It was quiet for a good two minutes.

“What?”, Nica managed after forever.

“Remus is a werewolf”, Milla repeated.

“Are you sure he wasn’t having you on?”, Chloe tried.

“Yes, I am. He looked like he was in physical pain when he told me. I mean it was like he expected me to tell him I didn’t like him anymore and would call the whole boyfriend-girlfriend-thing off because of it. It’s true. It’s definitely true.”

“Oh man… That poor boy. No wonder he always looks like he just survived the Dragon Pocks. He goes through hell every month…”, Blair commented with her eyes somewhere at the ceiling, implying that she was thinking. I figured she was remembering the chapter on werewolves we had worked through in Defence against the Dark Arts just before Christmas. I was doing that at least. The way the transformations were described were horrible. Bones breaking and rearranging. Every last bone in your body broken. And the afflicted was fully conscious through this process. Poor boy didn’t come even close.

“Ehm…”, I finally found my vocal chords. “ Was it smart of you to tell us? Sirius was proper freaked out when one of us found out about his secret. Are we supposed not to know?”

“Very smart of me. Remus wants you to know and he wants me to have somebody to talk to, just in case. But he said he couldn’t bring himself to confess to you. I mean, he’s telling the boys right now that all of us know. So, it’s fine.”

“Did he really think you’d drop him? We’d all drop him?”, Blair asked returning from her thoughts.

“Guess so…”

Blair jumped up and ran out the dorm. The four of us looked at each other and sprinted after her. We caught up to Blair - who was surprisingly quick - in the foyer and were just a step behind her when we entered the courtyard

“Lupin!”, Blair yelled. Under the passage four shadows moved. It was too dark to be sure that it was the Potter-posse but it seemed fair to assume.

“Lupin!”, Blair went again. The three shorter figures stood in front of the tallest one.

“Get out of my way! I wanna speak to Remus”, Blair demanded with all of us silently behind her, very confused about what was happening. The boys didn’t move.

“Ugh… Fine.” She leaned over Peter. “ Remus John Lupin, I am personally offended you think I - or any of us - would care for one moment what kind of weird illness you do or do not have! If you honestly think that would make one, let alone all of us, think less of you or dropping you as a friend, then you haven’t understood the concept of friendship or the first thing about us. How dare you doubt our love?” Milla stood next to Blair with a reassuring smile.

“I told you so.”

Remus just stared at the two girls, while his friends stepped out of the way and lost their bodyguard postures.

“You’re supposed to hate me”, Remus whispered.

“We’re supposed to be your friends”, Chloe answered and pulled him into a hug. “And we are. No matter what you have to battle.” Milla and Blair joined in on the hug and Nica and I didn’t waste any time either.

I felt Remus shake rhythmically and figured he was crying. Milla’s and Chloe’s eyes told me they thought the same thing and we decided to drag out the hug until he’d calmed down. Which took a moment.

“And you”, Blair turned around to the other three boys. “Did you just stand in front of him to protect him? Because if you have you, too, have no idea what friends are and how they function and you do not know any of us! I thought this drama had cleared up after Jette and Sirius talked things out. Are we still not worthy of your full trust?”

Peter hid behind James while Sirius’ jar dropped and James ran his hand through his hair.

“Please, use your words.”

“Remus freaked out when he told us”, James started. “ He expects everybody to hate him for what he is. And you stormed out here demanding to speak to Lupin, not Remus, Lupin. That didn’t sound cozy and friendly.”

“We trust you, Blair, all of you. But you seemed angry. Remus has been through enough and I’d rather you think I don’t know what a friend is then having my friend crushed.” Peter slowly came out from behind James, with a calm and stern voice.

“Did you just scold us, McKinnon?” Sirius still looked gobsmacked. “You are full of surprises. First that scandalous dress for Slughorn’s party, now the anything but shy outbreak of rage. I love it! Please, stick around.”

“Idiot”, Blair smiled.

Milla kissed Remus’ cheek. “One smoke and then the prefect’s lounge?”, she suggested and was met with a lot of nodding heads.

“Once we get up there, I will hear the story of how you two ended up a couple, by the way”, Sirius announced. “All the heavier stuff can wait until tomorrow or next week or whenever. I’ve had enough sincere and heavy conversations for one weekend. I want heart shaped eyes and giggling.”

“Softie”, Chloe commented, nudging him in the side.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing”, I answered. “It just doesn’t go all that well with the leather jacket and bad boy image.”

Sirius presented both of us with his tongue before he walked back inside head held high.

On the way to the prefects’ lounge we ran into Lily Evans.

“Remus! Jette! Don’t move!” We all stopped.

“ The prefect meeting from Wednesday is pushed to Monday can you make that?”

“Why are they switching?”, Remus asked, well aware that Lily smiled at his hand holding Milla’s.

“Something to do with Hector, he didn’t go into details.”

“Bonnie’s brother?”, I asked. Their mother worked for the Ministry in Law Enforcement. Normally when something was up with her or her brother it had to do with something happening to her mum in court.

“Yes. He said they couldn’t make it on Wednesday. I’m hoping everybody is free Monday, because we’re running out of nightshift plans and stuff…”

“I’m free”, Remus answered, raising his shoulders at Milla.

“I’ll try to fit in my detention before dinner and I should be good, too. If Crick hasn’t run into Bonnie yet, I’ll tell him and Hugo. And I have classes with Jasper and Annemarie tomorrow. So, I could just tell them. Don’t think either of them is in any club or anything like that. Should go over well.”

“Great, I’ll take care of Gryffindor and the sixth year Ravenclaws. Hector’s gonna talk to the Slytherins.” She breathed out in relief.

“Now that that’s settled: Remus John Lupin, I’m dying to hear that story” She waved at Remus and Milla.

“So are we, Evans. We were going up to let them tell it. Wanna join?”, James asked with his typical Lily-smile, but without the show he usually put on around her

“Up where?” Suspicion in every letter.

“Prefects’ Lounge.”

“Won’t work. That’s where Hector is.”

“Well, then one of the offices. Just anywhere, where we can all sit undisturbed.”

“I think our office is empty. Not as cosy as the lounge but room enough for all of us and I think there’s even some cocoa left.” Lily turned on her heel and walked back to where she came from.

“You coming, Potter? Every day you follow me around like a lost puppy and the one time that’s actually okay you just stand there…”

James grinned and started moving, pulling us with him. “I’m trying to process the fact that you just lead us up to the office instead of scolding us for not only abusing the prefects’ corridor but also staying out after curfew. And I don’t follow you around like a lost puppy. It’s not my fault we have picked the same classes. What I do, is ask you out. What you do is reject and crush me every single time.” Something flickered in Lily’s eyes. Remorse? Maybe the tone of James’ voice had brought it on. Contrary to his usual over the top performances he had answered while walking, not even looking at her, with his normal voice, that sounded a little defeated.

“Remus! Please, hurry up! This is the best thing that happened to any of us in a while, will you not torture us by playing tortoise?!”, James shouted before Lily could react.

Nica and I who walked right behind them studied the whole interaction and then looked at each other. Nica nodded ever so slightly. I agreed. It seemed Lily Evans had finally realised that James was not just trying to get under her skin and wind her up but that he really wanted to go out with her. And as much as she disliked his typical royal demeanour she was too much of a good person to willingly hurt someone’s feelings. This was going to be interesting.

Milla and Remus had gotten together after lunch. That was the gist of it. They both already knew that they liked each other and Milla had broken the last bit of ice when she point blank asked Remus why he didn’t kiss her after Slughorn’s party. He chickened out. Didn’t dare to let on just how much he liked her. What if she didn’t want him to kiss her? Milla told him he was an idiot and he kissed her. That was that.

It was a sweet but simple story. Something they both deserved. I like you. I like you, too. Let’s be a thing. Sirius high-fived Remus, Peter wanted to hear the story again. Milla had turned the colour of tomatoes and Lily smiled from ear to ear. She didn’t know Milla well, but she seemed to approve of her.

“You look good together”, she commented after Remus had told the story for the second time for Pete. “Like this is how it’s supposed to be. I like it. So, Milla, don’t break his hear because I might have to break you in return.”

“I didn’t know you were so violent”, Blair laughed while Milla held up her hands in defence.

“You should talk more to your sister.”

“Or listen closely when Lily’s around James”, Sirius roared. James rolled his eyes and went over to Milla to whisper something in her ear. She gave him a thumbs-up and laughed.

“I’m not violent with him”, Lily defended herself. “I’m annoyed. That’s something very different.”

“Not breaking his heart if I can help it”, Milla came back to Lily’s original statement.

“You’re not being particularly polite either”, James commented while sitting back down on one of the desks.

“Well, you’re not being particularly charming when asking me out for no apparent reason.” James snorted. The atmosphere that used to be blissful and fun instantly got colder and tense.

“No apparent reason? That’s rich.”

“Heartshaped eyes and giggling, I said”, Sirius tried to ease the tension but failed. James glared at Lily with a mixture of pain and anger on his face. Lily started fiddling with one of the quills next to her.

“So, either the two of you agree to go out and give me those heartshaped eyes, or you stop being weird when Remus finally managed to get a girl. This honestly calls for celebration or the sacrificing of a virgin, not for whatever you two are doing.”

He got a chuckle out of Chloe, Milla and me and a friendly punch in the arm from Remus but James didn’t see the humour. He still glared at Lily, audibly grinding his teeth. Lily picked up another quill and fiddled with that.

“No apparent reason”, James said again, more to himself than anybody else.

“James”, Blair gave it a try. “Maybe the reason is not apparent to her because she never considered there to be a reason.”

“Really? How many reasons for asking someone out can you think of, Blair?” Lily attempted fiddling with a third quill but let her previous two fall.

“Huh? I’m quite certain that Remus knew why Milla was asking him to take her to Hogsmeade. Quite certain there was only one apparent reason.”

“You started asking me out on the daily start the first day of last year, Potter!”

“Exactly!” James got up and left the room. He didn’t run and he didn’t throw the door but he was clearly done with the evening.

“I’ll go find him”, Sirius sighed, waved at us and followed James.

Lily looked at Remus for help who just looked at her with the same look Blair gave me when I suggested we could split the homework assignments and copy off one another.

“You could’ve worded that a little better”, he finally said.

“Seriously Evans, are you that naïve or do you honestly think so little of us?”, Peter asked while heading for the door. He was through it before Lily could answer.

“What a weekend!”, Nica groaned.

“And it’s only Saturday”, Chloe reminded her. “Guys, I’m really, really happy for you. I am. And I want to hear more of your day but I’m worn out.” As she got up Nica shot her a look.

“What’s with the eyes?”, I asked before Chloe was out the door. “She’s not been all that cheery ever since the dorm. I wonder why that is. Did you think she and Mag looked normal?”

I thought on that. To be honest I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to Mag and Chloe. I was too busy being happy I could talk to Sirius and Crick freely and imagining Milla’s date. But Mag and Chloe seemed just about fine.

“Yes.”

“So did I.”

Blair had gone over to talk to Lily whose face was fairly red and whose hands were still fidgeting. Blair talked to her in a hushed voice, guided her to the door and disappeared with Lily. Nica and I exchanged one look and knew we should just leave Remus and Milla to it. Chloe was right, we could hear all about this tomorrow. They deserved some quality time, after all they had just been through quite the day themselves.

In the hallway we hesitated.

“I don’t feel like common room to be honest”, Nica admitted. “You think James is okay?”

“I think he’s angry.”

“Hurt more like. You know how much he likes her, right?” While talking we’d started moving, neither one of us really sure where we were going.

“I know that he tells his parents about her a lot. And I know that he really wants to go out with her.”

“That’s not all.” Nica pulled me to one of the secret passages.

“Remember Slug’s Christmas Party?”

“Of course.”

“Great, then you know that I actually got James to leave with me.”

“Yeah, I remember that. How come we’ve never asked you about whether you got him out of his robes?” I truly wondered that. This would be the kind of thing we’d spent an entire train ride talking about. This was huge.

“Milla and Remus.”

“Right, but still…”

“I didn’t bring it up on purpose.” I rose my eyebrows at her, while we turned the corner and opened the heavy door. We stood behind the statue of Ursula the Unknowing. Nica waved me into the corridor. It was empty. She made a point of shushing me until we reached the staircase in the foyer and went down to our common room. Placing her index finger on her lips one last time she tickled the pear in the painting and lead me into the kitchens. Just like last night, the elves were already gone.

Nica gestured for me to get some tea going, but found cocoa powder and went on the search for milk. With my teawater and her milk on the tiny antique stove and the little radio playing some Baba Yaga, she finally started talking again while I rooted around the cupboards until I found Marmalade biscuits and cheese crackers.

“Look, I didn’t quite get him out of his robes but I did actually get my hand under them.” I pulled my face into a grimace. “We snogged. Very very well. But it didn’t go any further than that. We just hung out in the prefect’s storage room and talked. About Lily. A lot.” I poured the hot milk over the cocoa in her cup and set my tea. She dunked a biscuit in the chocolate milk and nibbled on it.

“He’s beyond the point of no return with her. You know? Said at the end of third year – his fourth – he noticed how pretty Lily actually was and how clever and all that. And during the holidays hherealised he dreamed about her and stuff. So, first day back he figured he should ask her out. And James being James he was convinced that she’d say yes. He thought she’d easily oversee or forget what she didn’t like about him.”

“Which she didn’t.”

“Right. He made me promise not to tell anyone, so you’ll never mention this to another soul, yeah?”

“Absolutely.”

“He asked her after the begin-of-term-feast, thought on the train or over food was weird. She laughed at his face, joked about it with Blair’s sister and said no. James kept a straight face and his head up, told her she’d come around, went upstairs without the other boys and balled his eyes out.”

“You’re joking!”

“ I’m not. He was head over heels for her beginning of fourth year – his fifth – and he’s still hoping she’ll give him a chance. When she agreed to dance with him at Slug’s Party he thought he’d finally gotten on her good side.”

“Wow, he cried over her sixteen months ago? It must have been hell to muster up the courage to ask her again and again and again and only ever hearing that he’s a toerag and an idiot.”

“He said it was good training for the Cruciatus, yeah”, Nica answered.

“I was aware he liked her but I didn’t think it was that … real.”

“I didn’t either. But that’s why I didn’t talk about it. I think it scared him that he told me. His boys know that it’s neither a scheme nor some mission for him but I’m not sure how honest he’s been with them over his feelings.”

The door creaked. We looked at each other, both grabbed our cups and a tin of snacks and fled to the little nook that wasn’t visible from the door. I could not be busted for breaking curfew or entering the kitchens without permission. Not after getting detention for attacking fellow students the night before.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s here.” Peter.

“They’re hiding. We’d be, too.” Sirius.

“Nica? Jette?” Blair.

“We know you’re here and we don’t have a teacher with us”, Peter laughed. Nica shook her head at me and I didn’t move.

“When he says we know, he means that we have factual evidence of your current whereabouts. In our hands.” What?

Curiosity might have killed the cat but also brought forth the Hufflepuff fifth years. We left our nook and found Blair, Peter and Sirius sitting at the table we had just left. We put the cups and tins on the table again before sitting down.

“How’s James?”

“What evidence?”

“They have a charmed map that shows the position of every person in the castle at every moment of every day. It’s brilliant and I want one.” Blair answered for the boys. “But they said they don’t know who made it. They found it. So, I’d have to charm one myself and that’s no project for the OWL year.”

“James will be fine”, Peter said, nicking my tea. “I think as much as he’s happy for Remus, as much it annoys him that the Milla thing was fairly easy.”

“Werewolf and all considered”, Nica cut in, “it actually was.”

“Exactly”, Sirius confirmed. “He knows that Remus deserves it all but the giggly and cheerful conversations about how sweet he is with Milla doesn’t exactly do wonders for his mood.”

“Is it that bad?’, I asked still trying to match the showman-James to the balling-his-eyes-out one. It wasn’t that I thought James had no feelings whatsoever. I knew him well enough to know that he did. That he was caring and kind. I knew that. But the way he usually acted and behaved in front of Lily was so… he was such a show off around her. He hardly ever had a normal conversation with her it was always grand and dramatic. Maybe that made me think that whilst he liked her, he also wanted to see when she would snap.

“What d’you mean that bad?”, Peter asked calmly drinking my tea.

“I mean I knew he wasn’t just messing with her. I knew he liked her, but… I didn’t know he liked her loads.”

“That is still an understatement. He’s proper in love with her. Or at least as proper as he can be without actually going out with her.”

“Seems like it. Just bewilders me.”

“That’s what Blair said, too. What is it with you thinking James has no emotions?”, Peter wanted to know chuckling.

“It’s not that I don’t think that he has emotions”, Blair explained finishing off the biscuits and closing the lit on the tin “It’s more that … Before we got to know you all we probably thought he tried to get Lily to reach her breaking point. After getting to know you we realised that none of you are as … let’s go with stereotypical as you seem from a far.”

“Right, so why would you be so gobsmacked at James?”

“Because he can do thoughtful and empathetic and sincere”, Nica answered. “He is so much more than just that dramatic show-off. If he would let Lily in on that little secret his chances would increase by millions. Blair explained all of it before.”

“Besides, he’s capable of reading people. He must know that Lily isn’t the biggest fan of arrogant or out there. He must know that she’d like him a lot better if she knew the real him. And he’s smart. It just doesn’t make sense that he’d go about the whole thing like he does”, I finished.

“Self-preservation”, Peter commented while putting on new water for more tea. He was met with three pairs of confused eyes.

“The first time he asked her he was pretty normal about it. Nervous, obviously, but you know, fairly calm and … thoughtful?” He sat back down. “He asked her in the way you just described. Like a normal person without any antics. But she instantly thought he was trying to prank her or something.”

“Rejection is one thing but being laughed at when admitting how you feel is something else. He got increasingly over the top to get some plausible deniability. He can laugh it off like she does. But he still hopes she’ll say yes”, Sirius helped explaining.

“Honestly, men”, Nica commented with a grimace. “Why would she think he’s serious about the whole thing when he makes it a joke himself? Why not tell her he’s not joking right away? Why does he get angry at her for assuming he’s playing a long-con when that’s what he wants everybody to think?” Peter and Sirius stared at her blank-faced.

“She felt really bad”, Blair said into the silence. I had already forgotten that she’d talked to Lily before she ran into the boys and came down here.

“She honestly didn’t think he meant it. Apparently, James said something about the whole thing before we got to the lounge that startled her and then his reaction to her saying she was annoyed with him for not leaving her in piece was the first time she considered him to be … a human being.”

“Yeah, I saw her getting startled”, I remembered.

“Right, we both thought she finally got it”, Nica confirmed.

“What did he do to make that happen?”, Peter asked.

“She called him a puppy, he said he wasn’t following her around but asking her out and that she rejected and crushed him”, Nica summed the interaction up.

“And he did that as his normal self. The one we know and she probably doesn’t”, I added.

We discussed James and Lily and Remus and Milla for a good two hours before we all crept back into our dorms. The boys assured us they’d make sure to tell James we loved him and everything wold look better the next day. Milla wasn’t there when I lay down in my bed.

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james potter #james & peter & remus & sirius #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #harry potter #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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Listen up. There is literally an app that can help you avoid self harm and I don’t know why we aren’t talking about it.

Calm Harm can be tailored to your needs and will provide strategies to help you get past those crucial moments of wanting to harm.

It’s also totally FREE.

once again, it’s called CALM HARM

497K notes · View notes

liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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The First One - Bonus scenes in traditional written word

This is a smau and a zukoXreader, although i haven't decided how this ends yet.

Y/n has recently transferred to Ba Sing Se from Omashu university and meets the gaang through a schoolproject they do with sokka and suki.

Masterlist

Bonus 4: Good Morning

The sound of a machine of some sorts woke you up. A look out the window confirmed two things: It was still rather early and Haru’s parents’ neighbours had no idea what an appropriate time for high-pressure-cleaning patios was. Sighing you sat up and looked around. You found your shoes and thought you remembered where the bathroom was.

The short night definitely left its traces on you: Your clothes and hair looked deschevelled, you didn’t smell as fresh as you would like, you had dark circles under your eyes and your voice was rather hoarse. You did what you could without rummaging through the drawers of the bathroom, then you wandered through the house.

There were fotos everywhere. Most of them were of Haru, who you guessed didn’t have any siblings, but some had a very kind-looking couple on them. A wedding picture in which they both laughed at something happening out of frame. It seemed genuine, a true candid shot. He had his hand around her waist and her hand was in mid-air, presumably on its way to fix his tie for the actual wedding picture, but something must have had happened. They both were bending over laughing pointing out of frame looking at each other.

You studied the picture. I made you like the couple. It made you believe in their love and their relationship. It made you want to get to know them. Be a part of that happiness and trust and joy. There was no question why they chose to display this picture. It was amazing!

You watched the couple become parents, buy a house, get older and go through the decades that saw Haru grow from a baby into a smiley toddler, distracted child, unimpressed teenager and openhearted twenty-something. They seemed a happy family. Truly.

The journey through Haru’s life had left you at the front door and wanting some coffee. You found the kitchen empty but quickly discovered a coffee machine. While it was entirely too sophisticated for the broke student you were, you did manage to get it to spew out some dark and caffeinated goodness into a cup you found in the second cupboard you opened. With it you kept on strolling through the house until the living room introduced you to the French doors that lead into the garden. And boy, the garden!

You sat in that little paradise when your phone buzzed and Zuko begged you to talk to him. Apparently, he was at his uncle’s shop working the early shift and there was not a lot to do as it was Sunday. You texted back and forth for a good while.

Yesterday you hadn’t talked to him a lot, outside of him apologising for his uncle and the Sokka-rum-discussion. You know learned that he was a good nephew and studied International Business and International Relations. When you called him out as ambitious, though, he was quick to bring up the words pressure and expectations. You didn’t know him. And whatever those expectations and that pressure were about it seemed you weren’t competent to comment on it or them. Zuko struck you as a private person. You contemplated telling him exactly that. You didn’t. You conveyed the message, though. He seemed relieved. And he liked politics and diplomacy which told you a number of things:

Be wary of any promises he makes. He might be doing that politician thing where he doesn’t keep them

If you ever want to ruin somebody’s life or career, ask him how to do it, he will have learned about it and remembered

If you ever don’t know how to handle a conflict ask him, he’s into figuring out compromises and status-quo-situation

He probably gives good advice. The kind that will be good for you and not too offensive to others

He is smart

He is into reading

He can find the good in the bad.

After all it sounded like his parents made him study those subjects and if he had had a true choice he would have gone for something else. Yet, he found aspects that he enjoyed, that he could use in his life and that he could be passionate about.

He liked travelling

All in all he was intriguing. A lot of layers to peel back. Whether it be the interest in politics – which were a lot of smoothtalking, manipulation, using popular opinions AND ideologies, the fate and future of countries and people and so many struggles or the family history. You could probably have real conversations with him. And you decided you would like to as well.

Another thing you learned about Zuko was that he was Sokka’s secret source for his part of the Worldhistory project. In the past couple weeks Sokka had gone on and on about how much information he had gotten form an anonymous sponsor.

“Sokka made it sound like you were the discovery of a century!”

“Am I not?” No, for all you knew he wasn’t.

Yes, he was intriguing and most likely multi-layered; yes he was tall and dark and handsome and that scar on his face added several facets to that handsomeness; yes, he had that tea-loving angel of an uncle, but he was no discovery of a century. He was some good-looking guy with an interesting background.

“To be determined” Better not alienate him by telling him he wasn’t all that special. You still wanted to be his friend.

Could you have gone on for two more hours talking to Zuko? Yes. Yes. You could have. But you didn’t because there were footsteps in the house. And it sounded like they were coming from the kitchen. You got up to investigate. Hoping you’d find Sokka, Suki, Toph, Aang or Katara in the kitchen, you would have been okay with Haru, but instead you found an agile white haired gentleman. From the fotos you recognised him as Haru’s father. He was doing something to the sophisticated coffeemachine and congratulated himself. Then he turned around, saw you, got scared and nearly let his cup fall and crash on the kitchen tiles. Instead he just made a weird move with his arm that resulted in a wave of hot liquid jumping into the air and splashing on the floor.

“Ouch!”, the man screamed. “Who the hell are you?”

“Sorry, Sir. Y/n. I’m friends with… I know your son. Haru. We helped him pack up the party yesterday and he told us we could stay here. I assumed you knew…Excuse the intrusion, please.”

“Tyro”, he extended his hand. You shook it.

“You’re not intruding. Haru told us that some of his friends might stay over. I just didn’t expect anybody to be awake yet. And we don’t know each other.”

“Again, sir, sorry.”

“That cup empty?” Tyro pointed at the mug you had brought with you.

“Nearly. I took the liberty of drinking your coffee.”

“Do you want more? I can offer you black coffee and black coffee with milk from the fridge. The thing is supposed to be able to come up with all kinds of fancy drinks, but that’s more my wife’s department. I didn’t bother learning about that.”

“Black coffee would make me really happy, Sir.”

Tyro filled your cup and gestured for you to follow him back into the garden. So, you did. He asked about who you were and how you knew his son.

“To be honest, Sir, there isn’t a lot to tell. I moved to the city for this semester. Transferred from Omashu University. I’m studying anthropology. One of the classes I take together with Sokka and Suki, who are friends with Zuko who used to be Haru’s roommate. Aaaaaaand they brought me to the party yesterday. There I met Haru. The end.”

“You helped him tidy up the speakers and all that jazz after having only met him that night?” You nodded your head yes.

“Commendable.”

You carried on talking to Haru’s dad, brushing on the subjects of family, education and music. The band Haru played in was called “Grounded”. According to Tyro they were “just having fun” but they also “sounded like actual musicians”. This band needed to be inspected.

You told him about Gray Sky and Tiff on the Rocks, the pub you used to play. It turned out that Haru inherited his passion for music from his father. Dad all but interrogated you on you average guitar playing and experience with piano lessons, when his wife walked through the French doors.

She introduced herself to you and asked if you wanted more coffee. As she was the coffee-maker-whisperer, you now were offered the entire range of coffee-drinks and gladly accepted a Cappuccino the size of your head. After she mad you happy with that, she sent you back out, with the intention of preparing breakfast. You offered to help but were quickly shut down.

The moment you sat down in the lounge chair by big tree, Haru entered the kitchen, got a cup of coffee from his mum and was surprised to find you in musical discussion with his father. Thankfully, he did remember you and was delighted to hear that you were a fellow guitarist, even though he was likely a lot more skilled than you were. In fact, you said this multiple times, resulting in Haru running inside and grabbing one of his dad’s guitars.

You started by playing some of the 90's hits that Sokka had massacred the night before, proving that Haru was better than you. You handed the instrument back to him.

"How about You Oughta Know?", he suggested. You looked at him, blinking.

"You said you used to sing in Omashu. Let's hear it."

"Uhm…", you hesitated.

"I'm with stupid", Tyro chuckled. "I'm curious."

"Fine." You let Haru play a few tacts before you started the verse. He harmonised with you in the chorus, during which Tyro got another guitar.

From Alanis you moved to the Verve; from "Nothing compares 2 u", to "Loser". Haru and his dad loved the 90's. Nirvana, Take That, TLC, Blur, Oasis, Britney, Beasty Boys, you named it they had it. Aang, Katara, Suki, Sokka and Toph joined you three out on the patio, all carrying cups of various coffees and plates full of food. While harmonising to Tyro's lead you remembered that his wife had talked about preparing breakfast. From what you saw on your friend's - yeah friends! - plates, she had not held back. There were eggs and bacon, pancakes, bread, cinnaminrolls and meats, cheeses, jams, butter and honey.

When she herself came out to join the table, she carried a bowl of yoghurt and nuts, that she assured everyone was an option for everyone. Tyro got his own plate and dat down next to Sokka. He motioned for Haru and you to come eat but you two were determined to finish the decade. So, you did. And then you entered the 2000s. Every now and again you'd pick up the second guitar, while alternating with Haru singing lead and harmonising. You had the time of your life!

Haru's mum topped off your coffees and although your stomach was screaming at you to give it some of the wonderful smelling food, you played and sang for more than two hours. The others enjoyed your efforts and sang along when they were done eating. Tyro relieved his son of guitar duties and jammed with you while Haru diminished the pancakes.

He then took your spot and you praised the eggs, bacon and cinnamonrolls.

"If you're ever desperate for something to do, you're welcome to my appartment and put on breakfast!", you said, all but crying, after noon when you had finished. Haru's mum blushed. But die didn't say no.

After you had finished your breakfast, everyone helped clear the table and load the dishwasher. Tyro insisted you all had another round of coffee, during which there was more music and Sokka got the recipe for the hangover cure smoothie that Mrs Haru had made him as soon as he entered the kitchen.

You left around 2:30 with many "thank yous" and "you're the bests" and "we can help some mores". Although you hadn't slept much you decided to hit up the Jasmin Dragon to see if Zuko had died from boredom already.

#atla fanfic #atla zuko #avatar: tla #zuko x y/n #zuko x reader

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

Text

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Nine: A hard night's day III

Just when we were headed back inside to warm up, someone called for Sirius and we both turned around. James, Peter, Nica and Blair ran towards us.

“Looks like you two are on speaking terms again”, Peter laughed.

“We are”, Sirius answered. “How’s it going with Remus?”

“Last I saw he was intensely captivated by Milla’s lips.”

“Yeah!”, I screamed.

Blair came over and put one arm around my shoulder. “Seems like everything’s gone into best case scenario mode just before Valentine’s. Remus and Milla are snogging, Sirius and Jette are talking, Crick and Jette are talking, Magnus and Chloe buried their unspoken feud and I got a new lipstick.”

We all laughed as we walked back into the school. We snuck into the kitchens to ask Mimi for some hot chocolate, which she presented with cream and marshmallows and nearly cried of pride and joy when we told her that it was delicious. To my surprise the boys really knew their way around the kitchens although I had only ever seen Hufflepuffs down there. Most students from the other houses didn’t even roughly know where they were but what had I expected from the school’s master pranksters?

Chocolate drunk and Mimi thanked once more we found ourselves back in the corridor and still ninety minutes away from dinner. After a moment of discussion we went back up to the Great Hall, sat down at the Gryffindor table and Sirius and I were filled in on what the rest had seen of Milla’s date.

“Took us quite a while to find them, actually. We thought they’d hang out in one of the pubs or the tea shop. But no.” The gang had finally found them in Casparian’s Curiosities which was one shop none of us had ever been in. They only spotted them in there but didn’t follow, so, we didn’t know what they’d done in there but we were even more intrigued.

During the remainder of the day they ran into the daters every now and again and reported that the two looked very comfortable with one another, that they were smiling a lot and even held hands after lunch.

“I would have loved to see that!”, Sirius moaned.

“You didn’t have to stay here...”, I said with a slightly bad conscience.

“Yes, he did. You were not okay and it was his fault”, Peter shut me up.

“Yeah, he’s right. I’m glad we talked. And I reckon that I’ll get a chance or two to watch them be sickly sweet together.”

“ I’d certainly hope so. They do not get to put us through all of this and not end up together”, Blair commented while taking out Nica’s Queen in the game of chess they lazily played. None of them were really paying attention.

Half an hour into our conversation Crick and Toby had joined us. Up until now they had mainly talked to Blair and Nica but when we had exhausted the topic of our dating friends and fell silent Crick awkwardly cleared his throat.

“Black”, he said, causing all of us to look at him. “Don’t think I’ve apologised for messing up your face yet.”

“ No need to, really. You were upset and I could have chosen my words a little better.”

“Be that if it may, you were right to pull me away from Jette. I was out of control. So, sorry.”

“Sure, thanks.”

“She’s lucky to have you lot. You’re good friends”, Crick said, making a point to look at both, James and Sirius as he spoke.

“Okay, that’s it. Don’t get to ... mushy”, James demanded with a smile.

I looked on in awe as the four boys jumped into a discussion of their upcoming group projects on Offensive Spells for Defence against the Dark Arts like they had been the best of friends for the past five and a half years. How did I lose both Sirius and Crick within twenty-four short hours and get them back within just thirteen? How had they gone from barely accepting the other’s existence to being all chummy? I was obviously never going to complain about it but it did bewilder me.

Laughing and smiling and joking and speculating a bit more we had a lovely time until dinner. The appearance of cups and plates as well as students and teachers coming into the hall even surprised us a bit as it hadn’t seemed like we’d been there for an hour already.

For dinner we were joined by Chloe and Magnus who told us that they had cut their trip to the music shop short when they practically bumped into Milla and Remus who asked if they wanted to join them for lunch.

“Do you know why they were at the curiosity shop then?” Nica’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

“ Yeah, really cute, actually. That shop has a lot of muggle stuff. Like the antique stuff. Don’t ask me about the details – I still can’t properly operate a telephone – but Remus knew that Milla loves those antique lamps and things like that. He thought she’d enjoy herself.”

“Did she?”

“By the looks of it. All rosy cheeks and giggles.”

Nica started dreaming up their wedding like she used to do with me and Crick. Fortunately, she had enough tact to never mention her liking me and Crick together after she found out about New Year’s, But with Milla and Remus on the right track, she’d found a new outlet for her romantic side.

We had just finished dessert when Remus and Milla came into hall, still wearing their coats, hats and gloves. Something was off. They seemed fine and happy but also had a weird electric vibe to them. Not the one you might expect from a first date, more like they were excited or nervous about something. Like they had a secret.

They sat down on both sides of James and ignored all of our inquisitive looks. Digging into their plates of blanched pumpkin and potatoes and Lasagna respectively they pretended to be too busy to tell us about their date. We all just kept watching them eat, hardly speaking. What was this? I exchanged looks with the girls and Sirius but none of us seemed to be able to make sense of the scene we witnissed.

Remus drank his chocolate mousse and stood up. “Mates, I need a minute...Mind smoking just the four of us?”

“What is going on?”. Peter wanted to know, voice shaking. He was made for harmony , not for conflict and I reckoned he was not ready to have two of his friends fighting again. After all Sirius and I had literally just made up.

“It’s nothing I just need a word, right? Let’s go!” He rushed out the Great Hall without checking if the rest followed him, which they obviously did immediately. All of our eyes rested on Milla who grabbed a pear pastry and whipped her head to the door. We followed her into the common room where she very firmly got rid of Magnus, Toby and Crick before leading us into our dorm.

“Last I saw you everthing seemed to be just great. How did you get to both needing to go into conclave with your friends?” Blair was clearly panicking. Milla blinked at her. Twice.

“Right, the date... That went well. We... eh... we are a thing now. Like a proper thing. Boyfriend and Girlfriend. But really there are more pressing matters...”

“What could possibly be more pressing than you being Remus’ girlfriend?”, I shrieked, just as happy as confused.

“Something else that happened today. Something he told me. Something I’m supposed to tell you. Can I do that, please?” We all nodded and looked at her.

“Okay...So...On the way back from the village we talked about how we both hoed that things with Sirius and Jette would work out and that they should be friends again and that it was stupid to keep secrets among people that you trust. Because it leads to situations like this, where everybody’s sort of pissed for nothing. Well, I said that. After last night I reckoned that Jette wasn’t too happy how Sirius told us no problem and gave her the cold shoulder.” I was very tempted to comment on that but bit my tongue because I needed to know where this was going.

“After I mentioned that, Remus got all weird and twitchy and quiet. I thought I’d done something wrong but I didn’t what so, I asked. And apparently it wasn’t me. And he just kept quiet. And I din’t like that, you know, because we had been a couple for like two hours and I’d already made him awkward and twitchy, which is not how things should go.”

“But...things are good now?”, Chloe asked a little hesitant rubbing Milla’s back.

“ I mean, I think so. No, they are. It’s just a little weird. But that’s fine, really, I’m werid, too. Different weird, naturally, but it doesn’t bother me. Just a lot to process.”

“What’s a lot to process, love? Think you left something out”, I calmly and slowly said while handing her her favourite teddy bear. She always said she only still brought it every year because her nan got it for her and she died two years ago, but we all knew that she couldn’t sleep without it. Lost in thought Milla played with the teddy’s ear.

“I did. Ehm.. Well, it’s ‘bout Remus and... his scars...you know, the ones in his face aaaand how he got them.” She took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling and talked without looking at any of us. “When he finally spoke again he said that I might be right. When you like someone you should be able to trust them. Especially, when they give you no reason to doubt their loyalty. So, since he more than just liked me and was probably going to spend a lot of time with me and get to know me even better he thought it was only fair to not have any secrets. None that mattered. And then he told me how he got the scars.”

“Merlin, if he got terrible parents, too, I’m gonna commit murder. Those boys have deserved much better!”, Chloe yelled with a passion I had hardly ever heard in her voice. Milla shook her head.

“No, no, his parents are great. He ... he gave ... he did it to himself. The scars I mean.” Now, she did look at each of us like that statement should have cleared everything up. It didn’t.

“Ugh, damn. He didn’t mean to do it to himself. He wasn’t quite himself when he did it. He... wasn’t himself at all. I’ll just say it, yeah. Otherwise this is never gonna work. Okay. There it goes: Remus is a werewolf.”

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #remus lupin #remus x sirius #peter pettigrew #original character #harry potter

0 notes

liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

Text

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Nine: A hard night's day II

The common room slowly came to live and I vaguely answered the question as to where I’d been that night a couple of times but mostly ignored what happened around me. Until all four girls stood in front of me and ordered me to breakfast.

“Let me get dressed. I probably look like I feel. I’ll meet you in five minutes.”

“You promise?”

“I’d take an oath.” They left and I went upstairs. Looking at my closet I landed on black Jeans, a black and grey flannel and a black cardigan. I redid my hair into the topbun and put on some make-up after brushing my teeth. Just to cheer me up a bit I popped on my favourite ring.

I didn’t quite make my five minute promise but I got up to the Great Hall as quickly as possible. When I entered, though, I considered turning back around and asking Mimi for that toast and jam she had mentioned. They all sat at our table. Milla next to Remus and Peter, who bumped elbows with Nica. Nica talked to Blair who sat across from her and in between Chloe and James who stole some bacon from Sirius’ plate. Why?

I sighed internally and very slowly walked towards the Hufflepuffs. Maybe if I walked slowly enough they’d be done eating and I could not feel that badly. But since I didn’t move at the speed of a flubberworm, I arrived at the table before Peter had started his second course. I sat down next to Mag and across from Toby, keeping some distance between me and the Potter-posse and Crick.

“Morning, you look terrible!”, Magnus greeted me and won a slap against the shoulder.

“Charming.” He grinned at me and handed me a cup and the pot of coffee. “Thanks.”

I mindlessly grabbed a raisin roll and a chocolate muffin and started plucking them apart without really eating.

Nica waved at me.

“Huh?”

“Ugh, if you’re sure you don’t want to come to Hogwarts and spy on those two lovebirds?”

“I am. Got homework and detention.”

“Right! What d'you get?”

“Caring for the plans in the greenhouses one hour a day. Not too bad, actually.”

“You could do both tonight, you know”, Peter said trying not to spit out his sausage and fried egg.

“Not if I want to sleep at some point.”

“Sleep is for the weak! Live a little, Goods! So what if you don’t have all your homework? Nobody will die from it.” Hoarse voice, cheery tone, friendly, casual, not a trace of hostility. Was he kidding?

“Consider me weak then.” I pushed an enormous piece of muffin in my mouth and nearly suffocated.

“It will be so much fun though, shopping and following them around just the right amount”, Blair tried to change my mind.

“I hope you’ll have much fun. But I’ll sit this one out.”

“You’ve sat everything out, since the year started, Tea!”

“Was I talking to you?”

“No, but since we’re friends again, I reckon I can take an interest in your wellbeing again. You’ve spent five weeks in isolation, Black’s right, you should live a little.”

“Thanks for the input.”

“Have I done something?”

“No Crick, course not, sorry. I snuck off to the kitchens yesterday and fell asleep there, I’m just grumpy. Which is another good reason to stay here, by the way. Get some decent sleep.”

“No changing your mind?”

“None.”

The group went back to loudly planning how to spy on Remus and Milla which had those two groan, roll their eyes and giggle. I stayed out of most conversations and focussed on the destruction of yet another raisin roll. My untouched coffee had gone cold by the time the others got up.

“Coming?”, James held out his hand to help me off the bench.

“Sure”, I sighed and took his hand.

He held me back from the others a bit.

“You should have come with the others last night.”

“I was making up with Crick.”

“Before that I mean. You should’ve come outside with them.”

“To do what exactly?”

“Listen to Sirius explain.” I didn’t answer.

“He did explain all of it. Granted, it took him forever which is way too long, but he did. And I think you should have heard it. Maybe even before the others.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m glad he feels… Forget it. It’s fine.”

We arrived outside and pulled out our cigarettes while Milla and Remus waved and made their way to the village.

“This is going to be great!”, Sirius triumphed.

“It better be. We’d have one hell of a mess on our hands, if it isn’t”, Blair answered.

“Don’t be a spoilsport. It will be great, they will come back coupled up and we won’t have to listen to Remus whine about her anymore.”

“Does he do that?”

“What? No, of course not, never, don’t know why I said that”, he recovered very unconvincingly.

I took a last puff, threw the fag on the ground and went back to the foyer.

“Where do you think you’re going?”, Nica shouted.

“To bed! You are off in a minute anyways, aren’t you?”

“We’re giving them an hour head-start. Come back!”

“I’m knackered Chloe, I’ll have a lie-down.” Spoken and disappeared.

“All is not well with you.” Crick had waited for me.

“I’m really tired. Maybe some other time?”

“If you want to talk, I’m here, yeah? Even if some idiot breaks your heart.”

“Noone did. And I wouldn’t come to you with that. I’m not a sadist.”

“You could, though.” I hugged him a little longer than usual trying to express my gratefulness, appreciation and how bad I still felt, then I left him standing in the foyer and went to bed.

Felix had come up to the dorm and woken me up with a weird expression on his face, informing me that Sirius stood in the corridor waiting for me, bothering everyone who went in or out, asking them to get me for him. Groaning I got up and dressed again. I reckoned that I didn’t have a choice to avoid talking to him. After all I had just accused him of ignoring me for no apparent reason, it would be childish to do the same to him.

Breathing in and out two or three times I stood in the common room before opening the door and stepping onto the corridor.

“Goods, hey.”

“Hi.”

“You seemed…discontent this morning.”

“How late is it?”

“Just about lunch time.”

“Bloody hell, I slept for a while, then”

“Yeah, you did. I’ve been here four hours and most of your hosuemates proper hate me by now. Felix was really annoyed when I asked him to get you.”

“He’s thirteen, he’s always annoyed.” I tried a smile. It felt weird.

“Listen, you want to grab a bite and have a chat? I reckon I owe you one.”

“I’d rather not, Sirius. I’m pretty sure I know all I need to know. It’s fine. Kind of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, yesterday cleared a couple of things up.”

“It did?”

“Yes. Just leave it, yeah?” I turned to either climb back into bed or confront my mountain of homework.

“Goods, I want to talk to you, hold up!”

“You want to talk to me? You want to talk to me? I’ve wanted to talk to you for five bloody weeks. And I’ve tried and sensationally failed, haven’t I? Can’t always get you want.”

I knocked against the barrel.

“Goo…Jette! I’m an idiot, okay? I know. But you deserve a conversation.”

“Damn right! I deserved one first day back from Christmas. Or the day after that. But I didn’t get one. I got death stares and ignorance like I had bloody murdered someone.” I stepped back from the door and lowered my voice again as more and more of my housemates went to lunch.

“I’m sorry”, Sirius hissed. “Which is why I’d like to explain it to you.

“What’s there to explain?”

“All of it!”

“You okay?” Felix and Marvin had just climbed out on the corridor.

“Sure”, I answered.

“You don’t look it.” He turned to Sirius. “She hasn’t had an easy couple of weeks, right? And she’s not good with waking up. Don’t upset her anymore, mate.” He looked into Sirius’ face all earnest and protective and I didn’t think I either ever respected or loved him as much as in that moment.

“I really don’t intend to upset her. I’m trying to apologise and make things right.” What I saw of Sirius’ expression was melancholic.

“You’re a stellar brother, Felix, you know that? She’s lucky to have you.”

“She really is”, I agreed kissing Felix on the cheek and sending him away.

“He’s looking out for you”, Sirius sadly smiled.

“He better be. I’ve done enough of that for him for years. Should’ve seen him in his first year. Lost little idiot.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. Same thing with Reg…” The smile vanished from his face.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. But I am. So, please have lunch with me?” I sighed deeply. I contemplated for a moment. I walked towards the stairs.

“Thanks, Goods. I appreciate it.”

“Hang on! Should you not be in Hogsmeade spying on Remus?”, I suddenly asked when it occurred to me that he had so looked forward to that little mission.

“Oh, the rest are covering that. Thought this was more important.”

We went up in silence, both wondering where this talk would actually leave us. Sirius pulled me to the very empty Gryffindor table. It was the emptiest of all four of them, only first and second years, Sirius and I. My own table next to it was a little more populated. Obviously the snow and cold kept some people form the village. Most Slytherins were apparently battling the weather and most Ravenclaws had decided to stay in.

Staring at the bowls and plates in front of me I realised I still wasn’t hungry although I barely touched my breakfast apart from brutally mutilating it. Unwillingly I piled some salad on my plate and decorated it with a bit of chicken breast. Sirius took half the total amount of chicken wings and drowned them in ketchup. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. He thoroughly enjoyed his food and I forced myself to finish mine. When a third of his plate was cleared he looked up from it and turned to his left, facing me. His face was covered in ketchup, he didn’t care or didn’t notice. I handed him a napkin.

“What did you mean when you said that yesterday cleared up things? I mean it might have for the others because they didn’t know what you knew, but what on earth did it clear up for you?”

I bit my lip and hesitated. He jumped his shadow, I should, too.

“The girls said some things, when they wanted to come pick me up to go upstairs that just…made me understand things better. No need for you to repeat it.”

“Come again?”

“They said that you had told them all about it because there was no need to keep it a secret from your friends.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s that, then.”

“What?”

“Well, I took the hint. That’s why I didn’t join you guys.”

“What hint?”

“Are you serious?”

“Always.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. Should’ve known better than to use that word.

“The way they found out is identical to the way I found out. Not asking for it but hearing it anyway. And you tell them all about it because they’re your friends.”

“Right…”

“Well, that told me all I needed to know.”

“I’m clearly missing something. Mind just telling me what you know.”

“Ugh…” I pushed my plate away and rubbed my hand over my face probably messing up my make-up.

“Do I have to?”

“Please. You seem to think that that means more than it does and I’d like to understand that.”

“It’s not that difficult: They are your friends, so you tell them what’s up when they hear about your housing situation. I’m not your friend, so you don’t tell me. I get that. So,I guess I can go?”

I got up and walked outside to the courtyard. Sirius caught up with me at the first of the icy steps.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“What else should I believe? When I found I seized existing for weeks.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“But what. Look, it’s fine, really. I don’t fully understand what I’ve done wrong but nobody can be liked by everybody and you don’t have to be friends with me to be friends with them. You just have to accept my presence. As long as you can do that…”

“Will you shut up?”, Sirius interrupted my babbling. “That is not true. None of that is true, yeah? You are my friend. I took a bloody punch for you. By a guy who’s built like a small mountain troll. I do not do that for people I dislike.”

“But…why… how…what?”

“I would have talked to you last night anyways, Goods. James, Remus and Peter set me straight. They were furious. Don’t ever doubt their friendship; I think they were ready to drop me for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Maybe not dropped me completely. The point is that I’m an idiot and you’re my friend. If you still want to be. Seeing how I’m an idiot…”

“Yeah, I want to be your friend, why d’you think I blew up at you.”

“Fine. Friends. Good Merlin. Thought that was obvious after we rescued you from Cricket…”

“So, did I but then you ignored me…”

“Said I’m sorry, haven’t I? Can you just let me explain?”

“Only if we go back inside, I’m freezing.”

He smiled and led me back into the castle and the prefect lounge. We didn’t talk on the way up. I didn’t know what to say anyways, I was rather confused.

In the lounge Sirius ignited the logs in the fireplace and I found some left over bottles of butterbeer.

“Nice!”

“I’m all ears”, I said after the first sip and gave Sirius my undivided attention.

“Right. Okay. Where do I start?”

“Where did you start yesterday?”

“Answering all the question the girls had”, he laughed.

“I have a question but I don’t know whether I want it answered.”

“Go for it.”

“When I realised you lived with James although your parents are alive and well I kind of assumed they… chased you out of their house. That right?”

“Sort of. I mean, you could say that. Look, I’ll go a bit far back in the story to answer that, yeah? That might be easiest.” I nodded.

“Here we go: My parents are pathetic, vile, racist people who love their so called blood purity and hate everything that isn’t a pureblood wizard or witch. I didn’t get that when I was young and I don’t get it now. And I’ve always let them know that I neither understand nor agree. When I was younger they didn’t make a big deal out of it, kept repeating their credo to me and hoped with all the traditional pureblood education I’d get the hang of it in time.

That changed when I started Hogwarts, got sorted into Gryffindor and befriended James, Peter and Remus. A bloodtraitor and two halfbloods were not who my parents wanted me to spend my time with. When I came home for Christmas they told me they were disappointed and expected me to use my position in Gryffindor House to spy on all those unworthy of magic so they could use that information in the Ministry to get unpure blood banned from Hogwarts. I refused. I told them I liked the blood traitors and halfbloods I knew and stuff like that. That’s when it started.” He paused and took a sip of his drink. He didn’t start talking again.

“The violence?”, I asked in a whisper. Truly, I wanted him to say no.

“Yeah”, he answered just as quiet. He took another sip of his bottle. “At first it was just a well-placed slap across the face and some yelling about how I was not serving my name. But the more they forced their views on me, the more I rebelled against them. Didn’t help that James and his family are normal purebloods who showed me how it could and should be done right. That made me even angrier at their ideals and twisted darkness. So, basically I escalated the rebellion and they escalated the repercussions. Slaps became punches, one became five and then ten and then don’t ask me how many, telling me I wasn’t serving my name turned into calling me a disappointment, a disgrace, a waste of space. You know…”

“I knew I didn’t want an answer to that question.” I felt a lump build in my throat and my eyes water. I usually wasn’t such a cry-baby.

“Oh, it’s no big deal…

“Yeah, it is! How could you even say that? It’s the biggest deal! They are your parents, they’re supposed to protect you and love you and tell you everything’s gonna be alright and be proud of you and support you. They’re not supposed to harm you, Sirius! Or break you down mentally. It is a huge deal.” While I spoke the lump in my throat grew and got audible, my voice cracked a bit. Sirius looked up at the sound of that.

“Woah, no crying! It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright! It’s amazing you’re not some whimp or an elitist arsehole or the worst person ever, fucking miracle that! You deserve so much better! Don’t tell me it’s alright! It’s not. Not even a bit.” By now tears were streaming down my face, clearly alarming Sirius.

“Goods… I don’t know what to do, now. The other girls didn’t cry. What do I do?”

I didn’t answer but leaned over and hugged him tightly. Sobbing like a toddler at the idea of the terror that he’d been through for the past five years. After a moment or two he hugged me back, rubbing my back, going “shhhhh” all the time.

“You know it’s not alright, yeah?”, I asked when I had calmed down enough.

“I know it’s not normal. And I know they’re wrong. But I am alright. Because I’m with the Potters now, and I got a family that actually functions and very good but sobby friends. So, please don’t feel sorry for me.”

“Of course I feel sorry for you!” Sirius let me go and pushed me away, his eyes narrowed and brows furrowed. I was confused. What had I done now?

“I knew it! This is exactly what I told them and they all went ‘no, she’s not like that, she won’t look down on you.’ And I believed it! I don’t need your pity!”

“I don’t pity you”, I forced myself to sound calm and neither shocked nor offended. “I am sorry for you.”

“Same bloody thing!”

“Not at all. You are my friend. I respect you and I care about you. That means I want you to be happy. I want you to be well. I want you to be unharmed. I want you to be as whole as possible. So, when you’re not happy, when you’re not well, when you are harmed, when you’re being broken, I feel sorry for that. Not because I look down on you but because I’m hurt on your account. You honestly think, I’d cry for you if I didn’t respect you? If I didn’t care?” I still forced myself to remain calm but it took all I had.

“You don’t think I’m a pathetic loser?”

“Sirius, why would I?”

“Cause you have such a perfect family. All of you. You all managed to be yourselves and believe in the right thing and make your parents proud. Why would you not think I’m an utter failure?”

“They are the failure! They failed you! And if you think any of us would judge you for what you’ve been through, then we have, too. But not you. Not you.” I closed the distance between us and forced him to look at me by pulling up his face with both my hands.

“You have done nothing wrong. And we all know that. You’ve stood up for what you believe in to terrible and horrifying people and you’ve come out a strong and kind person. We know that and we see that and we respect that, so much. But we still hurt for you. We’re still sorry you had to go through it. You got that?”

“I got that.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” I let go of him and returned to where he’d pushed me.

“Is that why you didn’t talk to me. Because you thought I’d judge you, I’d laugh at you?”

“Honestly, after that speech I’d rather not say…”

“As long as you don’t think it anymore.” He gave me a weak smile.

“Not anymore.”

“Good.”

“Want to hear the rest of it?”

“The rest of it?”

“Like how I ended up at James’.”

“Yes and no.”

“So, my parents had a dinner discussion about werewolves, one night. It was during the summer holidays and there had just been an article in the Prophet about how there is a German organisation that has set up a full-moon-camp for werewolves. If you’re affected you sign up and then they take care of you over the full moon. The idea is for families to not be as affected or whatever. Great initiative. Obviously my parents hated it.

They told each other how it would be a great idea to set the whole camp on fire on a full moon night just to ‘end that pest’. Now, I don’t know what you think of werewolves but I tend to think they shouldn’t be liquidiated for existence.”

“Agreed. Most days they are just normal people and when they turn, they’re not themselves anymore. I’ll be honest: I do not need to run into a werewolf during a full moon. There’s a reason they are classified as one of the most dangerous creatures, but I’m mainly sad for them. The people I mean.”

“Well, my parents would hate you. Even more. Anyways, I told them pretty much what you just said. Which… didn’t fly with them. And because they had spent the entire time I was with them by screaming at me and using me as their personal punching ball – don’t look like that! – they decided I would be given one more chance to return to their noble and ancient ideals. So, they made me. Literally. They made me do what they wanted me to do. Brought in a stray mixed blood dog and had me kick it.”

“When you say made me…”

“Imperius.” I had to find every last bit of strength to not cry again. There was a very good reason that curse was an unforgivable one.

“And when that didn’t have the desired effect they rounded the evening out with a Cruciatus. I was knock-out for about half a day, then I wrote to James and flooed over there. Never looked back.”

“Thank God for Euphemia and Fleamont. I’m glad you’re out of there.”

“So am I.”

We drank up our butterbeers without another word and silently agreed to go back out to the courtyard after a while. Before we opened the door of the prefects’ lounge I hugged him again. Practically buried my face in his neck, one arm around it, one around his waist. I didn’t cry, I didn’t say anything. I just stood there wrapped around him, trying to stop his hands from shaking, which hadn’t been still since he told me about his sorting. I hoped he’d understand what I was trying to convey.

“You smell like something very familiar but I can’t put my finger on it”, Sirius said after half an eternity. Difficult to say if I had succeeded in my mission.

“Coconut”, I answered.

“I like it.”

“Thanks.”

“You can let go now, Jette. I’m good. We’re good.” I let go and smiled at him. He opened the door and we left.

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #remus lupin #sirius black #peter pettigrew #harry potter #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems. But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Nine: A hard night’s day I

Back in the common room I sat down on a fluffy carpet and buried my head in my hands. I wasn’t sure whether going off at Sirius in front of all of them was smart. It could have just alienated him further. It could make the other boys mad at him. They more or less seemed annoyed now. I didn’t want to cause any more trouble. I really didn’t. When I realised I was thinking in circles I half-heartedly pulled out my Charms book from my bag and looked for a desk. I could have gone up to work by myself but I needed other people being around, even if it was the babbling and screaming first years who played exploding Snap in one corner. The old desk with the skinny legs and rose carvings that was painted black always spoke to me. I pulled one of the mustard-yellow satin chairs to it and elongated its legs. Nothing but an armchair to do your homework.

The more I read about huminification charms, the more I forgot my current complicated life and the better my essay on the possible advantages of humanified objects got. I loved the idea of charming a clock to sing me the time or to have my books grow feet and ears so I could command them to tidy themselves up. I reread the whole thing when somebody threw a shadow over my little desk.

“Jette?”

“Toby…” I braced myself for a confrontation that hadn’t yet happened.

“Uhm… Pince said you have checked out Montague’s Marvellous Mushrooms and Mosses.”

“I have.”

“Could I borrow it? Sprout has us on identification and I’m really stuck on one of the samples. I think it’s Taiwanese Mountain Moss but it could just as well be seaweed…”

“It’s upstairs. I can get it for you.”

“If you would? Thanks.”

“Give me a second.” I got up and went to my dorm. The book lay in a big pile on my desk. I had only checked it out to do something while avoiding everyone I knew. Grabbing the book I wondered why Toby was speaking so normally to me. For the past three and a half weeks he hadn’t said a single word to me and only ever looked at me to silently threaten my life. I was quite convinced that he hated me.

“There you go.” I handed him Montague’s work.

“Thanks, I’ll have it back to you as soon as possible.”

“Oh, no. Keep it as long as you like. I got two more weeks before it’s due back and I don’t really need it. I just wanted… something to read.”

“Thanks.” He turned to go back to the couch where he sat with Magnus but stopped halfway and faced me again.

“You’ve seemed absent recently.”

“Pardon?”

“I haven’t seen you around as much as usual. Everything okay?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. It’s just… Look, I’m Crick’s friend. Someone hurts him, I’m against them.”

“I realised.”

“Maybe we’ve gone overboard a bit. After Chloe yelled at Magnus we both considered what she said but it didn’t sound like Crick to blatantly lie about what happened.”

“I doubt that he lied. For him it is probably exactly what happened. It’s his truth. But, you know, not mine.”

“So, you didn’t tell him you loved him?”

“Ugh!”, I got up from my chair and started pacing around. “No. Not like that. I mean I’ve known him since I was …born? Must have told him I loved him at some point. And I told him about the crush in second year. But recently? No. The only time I remember that that word was even used was in the owlry in November.”

“That’s what he told us. You told him you loved him when you were alone in the owlry.”

“No! I said ‘we’.”

“Come again?”

“We were talking about how the girls and I spent more time with the Poter-posse and how he felt abandoned. So, I told him that we didn’t want to make him feel that way. Because we were his friends and we loved him. We! The group. All of us. Platonically.”

Toby didn’t seem convinced.

“What about the date?”

“What date?”

“You went to the party together. It was a date.”

“Not to my knowledge. When Mum said that Mrs Cricket was going to buy tickets for Crick and Jonas Milla and I wanted in on the fun. I convinced Mum to let me go if I stayed with Jonas and Crick. Milla then found out that she’d go skiing. So, I asked Crick and Jonas if they would consider walking there with me and getting me back home. I told them that they didn’t have to look after me at the party because I could just find myself new friends but that I would love to go.

Jonas had made plans to preparty at a friend’s house but Crick said that it would be no problem. How is that a date?”

Magnus had walked over to us and listened in on my story.

“It isn’t. Will Jonas confirm that?”

“Yes, Mag, he will confirm it.”

“Look, if I had known how Crick felt about me I would have been a little nicer about the whole thing. More considerate. But I didn’t know. Why should I have assumed that he’d think of that party as a date when I absolutely didn’t? If Milla had been in the country I would have begged Crick to take her, too. I was blind to the possibility of Crick and I ever being more than friends. So, if there were clues on how he felt I just… I just didn’t see them.”

“That does sound more like you than being a heartbreaking skank”, Toby commented with a crooked smile.

“Thank you.”

“I hate it when Chloe’s right. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You believe me?”

“Don’t think we have a choice, mate.” I leaped at them, wrapping one arm around each of their necks, trying hard not to cry and failing.

“Woah, Jette, it’s all good. No tears. Please, no tears.”

Magnus wiped away the wetness from my cheek with his thumb and smiled at me. “Hot chocolate?”

We put the houseelves to work and came away with three steaming cups of cocoa. I finished my homework sitting at their table, joking around every so often and feeling like maybe this year wouldn’t be so bad.

When the other girls came back from their lame astrology course Chloe instantly greeted us with a “Come to your senses, I see” which caused Magnus to roll his eyes and Toby to shrug. They joined us around the little coffeetable and we all let our homework be homework. Instead we decided to interrogate Milla about her plans for the next day, after all her big date with Remus was less than twenty-four hours away.

“He planned the thing”, Milla grinned. “And he’s very secretive about it. All I know is that we’re to meet in the foyer right after breakfast and that I’m not to smoke with you and the others but on the way to the village. No idea what we’re gonna do then.”

“It’s so romantic”, Blair dreamily said.

“No, it’s about damn time”, Nica answered. “They approach their expirydate.”

“Their what now?”, Toby asked laughing.

“Oh, you know. There’s a certain moment during the whole flirting thing by which you have to have gotten somewhere. Otherwise you’ll just stay friends. I thought everybody knew that. If none of the two makes a move, they’ll both just be done with it.”

“News to me”, Magnus said.

“That’s because you fell for Chloe and told her instantly.”

“And you were lucky that I liked you, too.”

It was one of the best afternoons I’d had all month.

But of course the joy of that afternoon was shortlived. When we walked into the Great Hall for dinner Mulciber and younger Black waited for us near the door.

“Would you look at that, Regulus? An entire group of mudbloods, filthy halfbloods and blood traitors.”

“And a good evening to you, Mulciber.”

“I think we should teach McKinnon and Levenstein a lesson in who to surround themselves with, don’t you?” Magnus stepped in front of Chloe while Toby shielded Blair.

“Oh, cute. They brought dirty bodyguards. Shame they won’t bloody help you.” Black’s eyes had a crazy glare in them, that I hadn’t seen before. “Don’t you know that their muddy magic can’t combat ours?”

“I’m giving you one chance to just get out the way and let us get on with our evening, Black. One.”

“Or what”

“Or I’ll show you what I could have done to Mulciber and his friends here, when they insulted your brother in October. Remember that? When you were actually rather decent and not yet consumed by those idiotic ideals your friends are so obsessed with? I remember you defended me.” Mulciber looked at Black.

“Temporary insanity”, Black said casually with a shrug. “Back then I wasn’t aware how much you love yourself some mudblood.” Black raised his wand at Milla and out of the corner of my eye I saw her flinch and take a step back.

“Black, hexing fellow students is against this school’s houserules. As is harassing them. Now, get out of our way!”, I yelled.

“Lacanta”, Black yelled in response, wand still pointed at Milla. Her hair started to crawl back into her scalp. She screamed in pain and shock. That was the moment that I forgot I was a prefect and an example to my fellow students. That was the moment I decided to be a good best friend and a very talented duellist. I grabbed my wand and pointed it at the Slytherin table.

“Oppugno!”, every last spoon from the green table flew towards Mulciber, Black, Flint and the rest of their little gang. As they were distracted by the attack I used the time to stop the curse Black had thrown at Milla and had her hair grow back.

I heard the spoons fall to the ground and instinctively conjured protection around us before binding all of our opponents with the Incarcerous by yelling the charm and waving my wand over all of them. One by one they fell onto the spoon-covered ground wrapped in thick yellow and black rope.

“So much for muddy blood not standing a chance!”, I huffed at them.

The Great Hall had fallen absolutely silent. The army of flying spoons had alerted every last person to our little conflict and when I looked up to the teacher’s table I realised that Professor Slughorn, Professor Sprout and the headmaster were coming our way.

“Maybe you should go and sit down”, I suggested, realising that I had been the only one who actually broke the rules. But my friends refused to leave my side. To be honest, I was happy they stayed. It felt good knowing they were with me and had my back.

Dumbledore undid the ropes and waited for the Slytherins to get back up.

“Mr Plouer, Mr Maguire, Miss McKinnon, Miss Levenstein, Miss O’Leary, Miss Scribe-Anderson, Mr Flint, Mr Avery, Mr Mulciber, Mr Lucasson and Miss Weary will now sit down at their respective tables”, Dumbledore announced with a calm voice that didn’t allow any discussion. Professor Sprout escorted the Hufflepuffs, Professor Slughorn lead the Slytherins back to their benches.

“Mr Black and Miss de Witt. Again. This time on opposing sides, I see. Not too long ago you made me reconsider punishing Mr Black, Miss de Witt. Will you be doing the same thing, now?”

“No, Sir. This time I’d like him to be expelled. But I’ll be happy if he get detention until the end of the year.”

“Yeah? In that case you should be in detention until you graduate, seeing how you attacked us twice!”, Black shot back.

“Miss de Witt warned you, Mr Black. She gave you a chance to walk away. I heard that with my own two ears. I might be old but by no means am I deaf.” We both stared at Dumbledore gobsmacked.

“You chose to ignore the warning and hex Miss Scribe-Anderson with a particularly nasty jinx. I hear it’s a very painful experience to have your hair retreat into the follicles. You will face consequences for this action, Mr Black.”

“But Sir, she…”

“She, too will face consequences”, Dumbledore cut Black off. “While you displayed excellent knowledge and execution of defensive spells, Miss de Witt, you chose to first attack Mr Black with a table-full of spoons, rather than instantly rendering them no-risk. I assume you could have bound them right away?”

“I suppose so, Sir. But my best friend was screaming in agony and Mulciber and Flint had their wands ready to hex the next of us. I decided to distract them first, so we could help out Milla. You’ll have noticed that not a single spoon touched either of them.”

“Indeed I have noticed.” He remained quiet for what seemed an eternity and you could have heard a needle drop in the Great Hall. Absolutely everybody was listening to our conversation.

“Detention for the both of you. With your respective Heads of House. They will determine the punishment. Two weeks each, you hear? I do not want to see anything like this again of either of you. But Miss de Witt, however impressive this demonstration was, you are a prefect to your fellow students, which means you act with grace and common sense. One more mishap like this and I’ll have the badge revoked. Understood?”

“Understood, Sir.”

“Well, enjoy your dinner, then.” He abruptly turned around and went back to the head table. I wasted no time getting away from Black and joined my friends.

Professor Sprout waited for me. Her usually motherly face had lost all warmth. The wrinkles that normally made her seem like a quirky grandmother now gave her a harsh appearance. She was mad.

“Once you’ve finished, you will report to my office. Immediately. No talking to your friends, no smoking in the courtyard. You will report to me instantly.”

“I will, Professor.” Without another word she turned around.

Professor Sprout’s office looked like a botanical garden. Every surface was covered in pots of all sizes, mainly in terracotta colour. They held plants that had fangs, produced purple bubbles, had tentacles and sent their blossoms flying through the air. From the ceiling hung even more pots, from ropes and chains, some suspended in the air without any help. Those held ivy and ranks cascading down onto the floor. The walls were covered in pictures and sketches of plants, that were likely pulled from textbooks. In the far back stood a huge wooden desk – also adorned with flowers and plants – in front of a big cupboard, a tub of soil and several watering cans.

I’d been here before. Generally it was a welcoming office that was filled with laughter and praise but I expected this time to be very different.

Upon knocking I got no answer but heard feet moving through the room, so I opened the door. Professor Sprout juggled three watering cans while rushing from one side of the room to the other, amber coloured robes flying into the air and crinkling. She hadn’t heard my knocking and didn’t seem to realise that I had entered. I let her finish watering a particularly naughty looking plant that slapped at her with thorned tentacles about the size of my legs.

“Professor Sprout?”

“Jette. Come in.”

She cleared away three tiny pots with what seemed to be human heads growing inside of them from a chair and gestured for me to sit. Then she took her own seat behind the giant desk. It took forever before she’d speak again.

“Professor Dumbledore and I are in agreement that your behaviour this evening leaves a lot to be desired. You are a Prefect. You should lead with good example and inspire your fellow Hufflepuffs. When you were given the badge at the beginning of the year you told me you understood that.”

“I remember.”

“So, I’d like to know what you think you’ve inspired your fellow Hufflepuffs to do tonight.”

“May speak absolutely freely?”

“By all means.”

“The only reason Mulciber and Black waited by the door was to find a victim, Madam. And they found that victim in us. Both of them are obsessed with blood purity and their own superiority. They are convinced that people like me, people like Milla should have never been allowed to attend Hogwarts. They are racists, Professor. Nothing short of it. I stood up to a bunch of racists in order to defend myself and my friends after we’d been attacked by them. Truth be told, I think I inspired my fellow Hufflepuffs to be proud of who they are and to remember they have the same rights to be here as anybody else. I hope to have inspired them to not take any of this elitist talk serious. I hope to have inspired them to choose wisely who to listen to and who to surround themselves with. I want to have inspired them to fight for their rights, be that with their wands, their fists or their voices. We might be kids in your eyes, Professor Sprout, but we read the Daily Prophet. We see the lists of missing people. We know about the debates in the Ministry. We hear what’s whispered in the corridors and we know what’s thought in the dungeons.

I’m expecting this whole bloodpurity-nonsense to blow up into one hell of a mess. And if my actions – however irresponsible or rule-breaking they were – inspired even one of my classmates to stand up for themselves when that mess is upon us, I’ll be proud. I do not see myself as a witch of second class. As a person of second class, because my grandmother fell in love with a muggle. I do not consider Milla or Toby people of third class because their parents are muggles. I don’t even understand how one could come to that conclusion. And because of that I will sure as hell not stand by when they are attacked for being who they are. For being brought up by loving good people.

I understand that I broke the rules and I understand that I should be punished for that. But I will not apologise for my actions. Not to you, not to Professor Dumbledore and not to those scumbags of Slytherins. I’d do it again. Because it’s right.” I took a deep breath and looked at Sprout. Her expression hadn’t changed throughout my lengthy speech.

“The headmaster has asked me to determine your punishment. It will last for two weeks.” She handed me a big, antique silver key on a leather band. “These are the keys to Greenhouse 4. You will spend one hour a day caring for the plants in there. You are to tell me at breakfast of every day when you plan to carry out your detention. If you want to do it before the classes, you tell me at dinner the night before. Enter the greenhouse and you’ll find a list of tasks. They shouldn’t take you longer than an hour but if they do you’ll finish the list before you leave. Is that clear.”

“Yes, Professor it is.”

“But?”

“But I thought student weren’t allowed in Greenhouse 4.”

“They normally aren’t. There’s nothing dangerous in there, dear. Just sensible plants and those we grow for the ingredients in Potions. You should be fine.” She put her glasses on again and went through the parchments that were scattered on her desk.

“You can go, now, Jette. Don’t lose the key. Have a good weekend.”

“You, too, Professor. Goodnight.”

Back on the third floor corridor I closed the door of Professor Sprout’s office and stared at the key. It was silver in colour and shiny and about as long as my entire hand. There were only about three teeth on it but the stem and the head were ornate to the max. Those ornaments were mainly owls and horned boars. The black leatherband was tied around the head that looked like a three-leave-clover. Everything about the key gave me the impression that it had been around for centuries and I wondered how old the greenhouses actually were. Had they been on the grounds when the school first opened? The key made it seem that way.

While fiddling with the band my feet carried me back to the foyer where I found my friends trying to hold back a raging Remus.

“Let me go! Let me go! I’ll have him! I’ll kill him dead! LET! ME! GO!”

“Will you calm down?”, James yelled back but to no avail.

“Get off me!!”

“Remus, please!” That was Milla’s voice but I couldn’t see her. I ran the last couple of steps to them and first found Nica who confirmed what I already suspected: The boys had come to dinner late and found out about what happened to us.

“Get off, get off, get off! He deserves the pain, mate!”

“I know he does, but you don’t!”, Sirius’ hoarse voice had that same soft and calm tone again that I knew from New Year’s Eve.

“Remus, please! It’s not that bad, just calm down!”, Milla pleaded.

“Not that bad?!? Are you kidding me?”

“Remus John Lupin, you listen to me”, I shouted using my outside voice and my prefect tone. “This incident has already gotten me probation as a prefect because I didn’t act like a rolemodel. Black will get detention. The last thing you need right now is to be grounded tomorrow, yeah?”

He stopped struggling for a moment and looked at me. “If I were McGonnagal I’d have you stay in the castle tomorrow if you do something stupid now.”

“That’s it!”, Milla decided. “You calm down this instant, have a smoke and a hot chocolate and then you forget about Sirius stupid brother. I will not not go on a date tomorrow. Am I making myself clear?” She, too, had used her prefect voice.

“He called you a mudblood and physically assaulted you, Milla.”

“I’m aware. And very flattered that you’re willing to defend my honour with such passion but I’ll be more flattered if you tell me how pretty I look in my new hat on the way to Hogsmeade.”

Remus’ fighting against the restraining hands of his four best friends and Magnus died down a little. I was certain that he was giving it up when Mulciber, Flint and younger Black came up to the foyer from the dungeons. Instinctively, Blair and I moved to block Remus’ view of them but he was too tall for that scheme. I saw his muscles tighten again and the other boys digging their heels into the stone floor. He didn’t yet say anything.

“Oh, is someone mad because we teased the little mudblood?”, Flint asked in the most condescending tone. Remus let out a quiet but very animalistic growl.

“Oi, de Witt, you’re on the list now, too, you know. Thought we could maybe let you get off lightly, given that your great-grandparents were purebloods but that’s over. You’re nothing more than a filthy mudblood-loving bloodtraitor. Worth nothing more than my brother”, Black announced, obviously hoping to intimidate me. I was going to answer but Sirius was quicker.

“Reg, don’t you think you’ve gotten into enough trouble tonight?” He still held back Remus, only looking over his shoulder. His brother let out a cackling laugh.

“Oi, Cricket get in here and help me out!”, Sirius shouted and to my surprise Crick and Jonas came to release Sirius of his Remus-restraining-duties.

“Reg, I’m talking to you. Don’t you think you’ve proven where you stand? We all know what you’re thinking, we all know you’re better. Just let it go. Don’t get yourself into any more trouble.”

“As if that was any of your concern, bloodtraitor.”

“Of course it’s my concern! You’re my little brother. However twisted your views might be I don’t need or want you to be scrubbing toilets for the rest of the year.”

“I! AM! NOT! YOUR! BROTHER!”, Black’s voice echoed through the foyer, rendering every other student silent.

“You are a disgrace to the ancient and noble house of Black! You deserved every bit of what they did to you! You deserved to be cursed and tortured and beaten. You don’t value or respect you blood. The moment you left, they burnt you off the tapestry and disowned you. And so, did I! Have fun living with your bloodtraiter-friends but don’t think that there’s a fraction of respect left in me. You’re dead to me.” Black pushed Sirius who stumbled a good couple of feet back. Then, the whole Slytherin group left the foyer through a corridor to their right.

Peter, James, Magnus, Jonas and Crick were still leaning against Remus who stood as relaxed as he would have on the train to the holidays. All of them were staring at Sirius. Like Nica, Milla, Blair, Chloe and me. Like every other student in the foyer.

Sirius didn’t move. I only saw his back but I imagined him staring at the spot where his brother had stood a minute ago. An eternity passed before James let go of Remus and went over to his best friend. He spoke to him in a hushed voice and got him to move again. He guided him to the courtyard, raising three fingers in the air to us.

“Guess, we’re giving them three minutes… Chaps, thanks. But you can let go now.”, Remus said, the first person in the room to speak in full volume. The other boys stepped back from him and Milla first punched him in the arm, then leaned against him. The rest just stared at Peter and Remus waiting for some kind or explanation, while my eyes focused on nothing in particular and I let my thoughts run.

I had been right. They had tortured him. His parents had tortured him. Those three sentences raced through my head in a loop, so that I didn’t realise that Peter was talking to me.

“”Jette? You coming?”, he asked very carefully and softly.

“Sorry?”

“The three minutes are up. We’re gonna go check on Sirius.”

“I have a feeling you two should do that without us”, I answered, thinking of the weeks of silence I had endured for knowing.

“I think you should come”, Remus insisted.

“No, no, I won’t do that. It’s…eh… personal. His best friends should check on him.” The other girls and three boys nodded and we all stepped closer towards each other.

“You are his friends, too. I really think you should come and prove that to him. He might need it.” Remus’ words convinced the other girls, but neither me nor the three Hufflepuff boys. In silence we went down to the common room.

When we had all climbed through the fake barrel I turned to go upstairs to my dorm but Jonas held me back. “Is it true?”

“What younger Black said?” He nodded.

“I think so. I mean, I know he lives with the Potters, so I’m guessing the rest is true, too.”

“They beat him?” The first words Crick had spoken to me in nearly five weeks. The first time he looked at me like he was Crick and I was Jette and we were friends.

“I think so.”

“Merlin, I’m such a git! I punched him.”

“I’m aware.”

“Of course you are…”

Jonas pulled me and the other boys onto one of the couches.

“You wouldn’t know from the way he acts. He’s so…”

“I know. I know.” I went back to the situation I had just witnessed and tried to ignore the obvious traumatic conversation between the Black brothers, which lead me to a different thought.

“How did you help them out? Like why? Didn’t see that coming.”

“I don’t have a problem with Remus”, Crick answered.

“You don’t?”

I realised that Magnus and Jonas got up and left us alone.

“No. I never had.”

“Liar. You hate him. You hate them all!”

“No, no! I… My problem with them was that I thought you hung out with them because you liked one of them too much.”

“Crick, I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know. I didn’t think it was a possibility, it was… to me it was just us going to a party. It was us being friends.”

“I know. It’s not your fault. I was seeing a sign in everything you did because I wanted to. And I didn’t handle myself well on New Year’s. You’re not the one who should say sorry.”

“I hurt you.”

“I scared you. That’s worse in my book.” We were quiet for a moment.

“Jette, I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I know you to be a good person, kind-hearted, loyal, loving. You don’t play people. But in that moment …”

“I get it. It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I said things I shouldn’t have. I accused you of things you would never do, I know you’d never do and I called you… well, not very nice things.”

“Not to my face, you didn’t.”

“I told Black I thought you were a scheming whore.”

My eyes widened. Surely, this couldn’t be true.

“And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I was hurt and I was confused and I felt embarrassed and I didn’t think before I spoke. I just… I was so convinced you’d be happy. I didn’t even consider the possibility you wouldn’t want me. Guess, I am that arrogant.”

“I never meant to hurt you or confuse you or embarrass you. You’re Crick. You’re my Crick and I care about you.”

“Which is probably why I fell so stupidly hard for you.”

“I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“Don’t. We’re friends. I like being your friend and I’ve missed you recently. I’ll get over it. With people like Black, Mulciber and Flint running around we need all the friends we can get, right?”

“We’re friends?”, I felt a tear rolling down my cheek and wiped it away in annoyance.

“Yes, we’re friends. Com here.” Crick pulled me closer and put it arm around me. I buried my face in his shoulder and concentrated on my breathing to not burst into sobs.

“I missed you, too”, I whispered right before Felix, Jonas, Magnus and Toby joined us.

“Finally! Are we good, again?”

“Yeah, we’re good”, Crick answered, gently pushing me away. “Safe distance. It’ll take me some time to get back to normal.”

“Whatever you want”, I smiled at him.

The boys caught me up on their lives. Jonas had had his problems with Valerie who had hoped he’d become her boyfriend over the first weeks of January and he finally officially confessed that he was into Elaine. I glanced at Crick who was suddenly very interested in his finger nails.

Toby had gotten into some hot and steamy action with a muggle girl in his home town during the holidays that he described so vividly Felix went from red to nearly purple as he listened.

“Jette!”, Nica yelled over the commotion of the common room.

“There you are! Come, we’re meeting the boys up in the fifth year office. Come!” Blair tried pulling me from the couch but stopped when she realised that I was sitting next to Crick. Still holding my hand she looked between him and me.”

“They’ve worked it out”, Felix explained while slowly returning to his natural face colour. Blair smiled. “That’s awesome!”

“How’s Black?”, Jonas asked.

“He’s okay.”

“Was it all true what his brother said?”

“Yes”, Chloe answered with very puffy eyes. “He moved in with the Potters last summer after his mum used an unforgivable curse on him.” Her voice turned into a whisper at the second half of that sentence.

“No, she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did.”

“How do you know that?”, I asked realising that this was information I didn’t know before.

“Sirius told us. We’ve been outside until now and nearly froze to death but we’re not done talking. Figured you’d wanna come. He said it’s not a secret from his best friends. Those he can trust.” Aim. Shoot. Headshot. More like heartshot. He told them. He trusted them with what must be his biggest secret because they were his best friends. Ouch. What was this day?

“Get up. Let’s go. Milla went right up with them. They’re waiting. Sirius is forcing all of us to tell a secret, so he has something to hold over our heads.” Nica laughed. I didn’t move.

“I don’t feel like talking, actually.”

“Are you having a laugh?”

“No, I’m not. I’ll stay here. Maybe take a walk. Besides, I missed out on the whole conversation; I’d just be in the way. You go.”

They attempted to take me with them two more times but I remained strong. If I saw Sirius right now, I’d yell at him until I lost my voice and he needed anything but that right now. The boys asked me whether I was okay, I lied and excused myself. The corridor was empty. What was I supposed to do? I aimlessly went up and down the hall a couple times, then tickled the stupid pear in the stupid fruitbowl on the stupid painting and went into the stupid kitchen. It was empty. The houseelves were gone and only one candle was lit. I took it with me to the little nook in the very back that was hidden behind a big ingredient cupboard where I had sat with Milla last year. I poured some sugar on the window sill and let one of the small teacups dance around in it making spirals of sugar as it did. While I watched the circles and spins I welled up again. They learned about this whole situation the exact same way I did: by someone telling them without them asking. Not because Sirius wanted them to know. Why did they instantly get the whole story and were treated as best friends and trustworthy people, while I got pushed into non-existence for several weeks? Had I failed Sirius – and therefore the other boys – in some way, shape or form as a friend? Had I not made it clear that I was their friend, that I cared about them, that I respected them? I prided myself in being a good friend. I was proud to be loyal and trustworthy, that I listened to my friends rants even if I had fourty times already. I thought of myself as a good person and a good friend and it bothered me that I apparently hadn’t succeeded in conveying that. Thick teardrops fell into the sugar and slowed the teacup down. It bothered me that all of the other girls had proven themselves to be trustworthy and kind and loyal and deserving of conversations and the truth. It bothered me that I over the last couple of months hadn’t. And it confused me, too. After all when Crick had gotten out of hand they had stepped in without me asking them to. They obviously deemed me worthy of being defended – and getting punched in the face! – as well as taking in. I didn’t understand where the line lay that the other girls had crossed and I hadn’t. I kept running through scenarios and theories for hours, incapable of stopping the tears from falling.

“Miss needs to get up! Miss needs to go upstairs and have breakfast. Or Miss should go have a sleep in a bed and not next to the stove. It’s not comfortable. And Mimi needs it. It’s the stove to prepare the tea on, Miss.” I opened eyes to a pair of gigantic sky blue tennis balls with pupils and the roundest nose I’d ever seen.

“Good morning, Miss!”, the houseelf chirped. “Do you think Mimi could use the stove, Miss?”

“Oh, Morgana, yes, by all means! I’m so sorry. I didn’t plan on falling asleep. I apologise for delaying you.”

“Oh, no Miss, don’t. Mimi just came in and found Miss. No problem. No problem, at all.” The elf started putting pots of water on the stove while I sat up and rubbed my aching neck. I still sat on the window sill, the wet sugar and teacup still in front of me. I quickly waved my wand to clean up the mess I’d made.

“Thanks, for waking me up, Mimi.”

“Of course, Miss. Can Mimi do anything else for Miss? Maybe some tea or coffee or toast and jam?” Coffee sounded absolutely heavenly.

“I really don’t want to bother you, Mimi. I could just go upstairs, I reckon breakfast will be served shortly.”

“In half an hour, Miss. But you could take something to shorten the waiting time.” She smiled at me from one ear to the other.

“Mimi makes great tea and coffee, Miss!”

“I don’t doubt that for a second, Mimi. I can’t survive the day without two cups of coffee at least. And it’s always great.”

I didn’t think it was possible but her smile widened even more.

“Thank you, Miss, thank you. Mimi makes you a cup!”

And so she did. Armed with the biggest mug of coffee I had ever owned – Mimi insisted I keep it as a gift and token of her appreciation of my appreciation of her coffee – I left the kitchen and walked across the corridor to fall onto an armchair in the common room. My neck still hurt, my arms were sore and my back felt roughly fifty years older than it was. Smart move, de Witt. Fall asleep in the kitchen.

“Where have you been?!” Milla sprinted down the spiral staircase from the dorms. I checked the time. It was before early.

“Why are you awake?”

I had spent quite some time with Sprout yesterday evening, then we all witnessed the Black brothers go at each other, then I spent like ninety minutes in the common room and then Milla had been upstairs with the Potter-posse. I was sure that she didn’t get to bed before one or two o’clock. She was Milla. She was supposed to not get up before noon.

“I needed the loo and you weren’t there. Like when I went to bed.” She sat down next to me, still wearing her pyjama’s, looking at my jeans and jumper from yesterday suspiciously.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And where?”

“Kitchens.”

“Why?

“Not like I did it on purpose. I went there for a tea and to think and just fell asleep.”

“I thought that you stayed with Crick and the lot, now that you’re friends with them.”

“Well, Crick said he’d need some time to get back to normal. He pushed me to a safe distance…”

“Can’t blame him.”

“Right. And we had caught each other up on the holidays and the past few weeks, so…

“So you could have come up with the others and talked to us.”

“Yeah, theoretically.”

“Theoretically? What kept you from doing it practically?” I bit my tongue and looked at the burned, black logs in the fire place.

“Remus told me that you knew since New Year’s.”

“Of course he did.”

“He also told me that it was why Black went silent on you.”

“Of course he did.”

“Seems like you would have wanted to get the whole story. To… I don’t know… find out why he was mad… or… you know”

“Ehm…Didn’t feel like it.”

“Why not? You were so angry at him for being angry with you. Why not ask him why he’s so stupid?”

“I kind of know, already.”

“Oh?”

“Can we not do this? I slept really badly and you should probably get ready and go to breakfast. You got a date today, you know.”

“Believe it or not, I remembered that.”

She clearly didn’t want to but she went back upstairs. I stayed in my armchair, sipping my coffee, trying not to cry again and not to think about the whole situation. It had been a really weird day. Classes on my own, tainted memories, yelling at Sirius, making up with Toby and Mag, getting attacked by little Black, getting into detention in Greenhouse 4, witnessing half the school learn about Sirius living with the Potters, making up with Crick and falling asleep in the kitchens crying. What the hell?

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #remus lupin #sirius black #peter pettigrew #harry potter #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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The first one - Bonusscenes in traditional written word

This is a smau and a zukoXreader, although i haven't decided how this ends yet.

Y/n has recently transferred to Ba Sing Se from Omashu university and meets the gaang through a schoolproject they do with sokka and suki.

Masterlist

Bonus 3: Partytime

It was a short walk from the metrostation to the park in which the party was held. Suki and Sokka had explained to you that their friend Haru had helped organise it. Apparently, it was a thing the Psychology department threw every year – that was to say the students of the Psych faculty. Haru was one of them and deeply involved in Campus life.

Sokka had said that you were going to be gobsmacked and mind boggled by the professionality with which the party would be set up and you had laughed. Shame on you for not believing him. He had been right.

The park was obviously of the public variety and so you expected a couple speakers, and crates of beer strewn about. What you didn’t expect were fairylights in every last tree and bush, a DJ set-up of the highest quality and amazing sound from all the speakers one could imagine, or three tents with bars in them, where drinks were reasonably priced. You hadn’t been expecting the benches, couches and tables made from pallets used in warehouses or the abundance of cushions and pillows. You hadn’t expected the camping chairs and the make-shift firepit. It was insane and you stood in awe as you failed to follow Suki.

“You coming?”, Aang laughed before he grabbed you by the hand. You first made your way to one of the bars, then, equipped with alcoholic goodness, Suki introduced you to Haru, who turned out to be an ex-roommate of Zuko’s. He also played guitar in what he called an inappropriately ambitious garage band, which intrigued you. But before you really got to interview him on any of that, he was disappeared by a friend of his.

Suki found a couple of her Kyoshi sorority sisters and introduced you to them and their partners. It turned out that your initial idea of fraternities and sororities was wrong: They were not all terrible and not all ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ were stuck up snobs. Suki was the best example of that. She was amazing and clever and smart. And very kind and not at all elitist. After all she was the one who invited you to this shindig. Her ‘sisters’ and their boyfriends and girlfriends, some of which were also in fraternities and sororities, were as kind and open as Suki was and you spent a good portion of your night learning names, trying to remember the history of the different organisations and their respective significance to BSSU, being taught simple fight stances and moves from the Kyoshi’s and laughing.

You laughed a lot. Only halfway through the night, hours later, after Sokka had joined you again, when you had lost all sense of being a stranger, you realised how desperate you’d been for this kind of interaction. This kind of laughing, dancing, making fun of people and talking bullshit. How much you had needed to be part of a group. How lonely you had actually been.

But at this moment, while you were trying to not spit out your beer as you listened to a story about Suki, expertly told by Mamoto, who was either someone’s boyfriend or someone’s brother – who knew? There were so many people and so many connections and a good deal of friends dating a friend’s ex – you didn’t think about what you’d needed for two months. You thought about … nothing? Everything? Really, you just let your thoughts drift, like you drifted yourself. From conversation to conversation, from person to person, from group to group, from subject to subject.

As nervous as you’d been standing in front of the dragon, as relaxed you were now. You didn’t really care about the music or the drink you had in your hand – you were not overdoing it, though, you were still new and needed to make a good expression – you cared about the company. And the company was excellent.

Bian, one of the Kyoshi-sisters, and her girlfriend Tuyet had claimed you after they found out about Gray Sky.

“A band? Like a proper band?”

“I mean that depends on your definition of ‘proper’ but, yeah? There were several people, playing several different instruments in order to create a coherent song.”

“Which means a proper band!”, Tuyet assured you.

“Have you ever played at a place? Or like an actual concert?”, Bian wanted to know.

“We used to play Friday nights at a bar.”

“Proper band!”, they both smiled at you.

“You should meet TaMing. She was a Kyoshi-sister before she dropped out of college. She plays in the same band as Haru.”

“Oh, I’ve met him. Seems nice.”

“Right, right. He is. Usually he brings his guitar to these things. At some point he will sit at the bonfire over there “, Bian explained, “and play some typical bonfire music. He’s good. You should go over there.”

“Not right now, though. I would first like to know what you think of Sokka!” Bian’s face was hard to read. You couldn’t tell if she liked or hated him but in a sense you also didn’t care. Your answer came instantly: “He’s great!” He was. A funny kind person with some brains. Admittedly, he didn’t look like a genius or ever put a lot of emphasis on how much excelled academically, but that didn’t take his intellect away. His jokes and nonchalant-ness were inviting and genuine and deceptively ‘hid’ his smarts. Sokka wasn’t intimidating when you first met him, but that didn’t mean that you shouldn’t be scared of him.

You were quite certain that you wouldn’t want to cross Sokka. You’d be dead. You’d be killed until dead. But it would look like an accident…

“Don’t you think he is a bit too goofy?”

“No, I don’t. I mean he sure is goofy, but I find that to be delightful.”

“Give it a couple more weeks.”

“You don’t like Sokka?”

“No, I like him! I just also find him annoying, I could do without all the dumb jokes. But he’s good to Suki and really, that’s the only thing that matters…If he makes her happy who am I to complain about some goofy puns, you know?” You liked Bian.

So, a little later you followed her to the camping chairs by the bonfire. This is where you met back up with Toph, who you now realised you hadn’t seen in a hot minute. Just like a bunch of the others. In the beginning of your little Kyoshi-session you had all but held hands with Suki and Katara, but Suki soon left you in order to wash someone’s head about their head – Wan is that you? In Ba Sing Se? – so you held on to Katara who vanished quickly after Suki with what looked like Aang.

Now you were reunited with Toph you brought out the bottle of Banana liqueur you got earlier that day. Toph tried some and declared you crazy. It was an acquired taste. While you were drinking your respective drinks Toph explained the general basics of the group to you:

“Well, you obviously know that Sokka and Suki are dating. That’s a nice spot to start. Suki is new, Sokka is old, meaning that I knew Sokka before I knew Suki. Suki just is Sokka’s girlfriend to me, you know. He went off to college and weeks later we were hearing about this badass girl he tried to get to like him. It was very entertaining.” You chuckled at the idea of Sokka trying to impress Suki before they were dating.

“Anyways, I heard about Suki because I was friends with Sokka in High School. Sort of. I was friends with Aang, who was friends with everyone in High School, because, well you’ve met him. He’s Aang. He’s friends with people. But he was pretty close to Katara and Sokka, after they met. And us four kinda became our own little core group.

So, Sokka, Katara, Aang and I are all old, while Suki, Zuko, Haru and you would be new.”

“Well”, you interrupted her, “I wouldn’t dream to compare my standing with you core group to Suki’s position. I just met you. She’s been dating Sokka for how long?”

“2 years 10 months.” That was quick. She just knew that. Off the top of her head. You made a mental note.

“And Zuko has probably been a part of your group for a while as well, right?”

“More or less since after he graduated. His time at uni did him well, I’d say. We ran into him around new year’s of his freshman-year here”, she whirled her arms around, hitting Tuyet in the face.

“Sorry, I thought you were further away. Anyways, he started being nice and I think we ended up together on New Year’s. And after that he bonded with Sokka in his first year here. So, you know, Suki – Zuko – Suki -Zuko – about the same time they joined.

And back then Zuko lived with Haru, so that’s how we met him.”

You kept drinking and chatting until Sokka burst onto the scene looking for Suki. When he couldn’t immediately find her, he asked you for the bottle of rum you still had.

“Listen, it’s late and I’m not waiting for my illusive girlfriend to bring me a drink, to start catching up!”, Sokka yelled after you commented on how much of the bottle he had emptied in just his first gulp. “I asked Suki to get my drink ready and await me, but she ignored that… No, Toph. No.”

He held the bottle out of her reach and twisted his shoulder weirdly, so that she’d never guess where exactly the rum was. He kept cradling the bottle while Haru and some friends found their way to the bonfire and – like Bian had promised – broke out the guitars. They were good. Really good. You hummed along to some of the songs and joined the choir of Toph, Sokka, Suki, Zuko and a bunch of strangers in the choruses of most others.

Suki took the bottle off Sokka, nearly as soon as she arrived, but when the 90’s boyband hits sounded through the park, Zuko gave it back to him.

“Poor Suki, will not agree with that”, you grinned as he caught you watching him.

“Maybe, but you will. Believe me”, Zuko said with a smirk and a wink.

He was right. With another two gulps of rum, Sokka was ready to not only sing solos but also presenting his version of well-known boyband-choreographies.

“You still judging me?” Zuko leaned over and gestured for the bottle of Banana liquor.

“Yes, sorta. I’m still feeling for Suki. She will not have a good time tonight.”

“You really underestimate Sokka, you know. He’ll be just fine. And so will she. Maybe a little exhausted because he’s going to be full of energy all night.”

“What about the hangover tomorrow?”

“They don’t live together.”

“Sounds like a technicality…”

“Meh”

With a look Zuko asked permission to try the Banana liquor and, with a look, you gave it to him. His face twisted in various amusing ways before nodding.

“Not what I expected. Gotta say it. But I think I may like it.”

“Take like, two more sips. You should be a fan after.”

He followed your instructions and grinned at you. “It is unique, I give you that.”

“You can always give me the bottle back.”

He kept it. What happened to it, you didn’t know but it never found it’s way back to you. Zuko either emptied it or he passed it on to someone. Not that you cared. Suki had reluctantly joined Sokka in his choreography and, surprisingly, so had Bian and Tuyet and some other Kyoshi sisters. Tuyet was pulling you from your seat to join. Toph pushed you off the chair and when all said and done you had been dancing stupid choreos of Sokka’s for about 80 minutes and missed Zuko leaving. Thus was created the mystery of the Banana liquor.

The night ended late. It was early morning and the birds were chirping when you carried the last of the boards that had made up the bars to the van. It would be locked and collected tomorrow by some Psychology student. Haru offered his parents’ house as refuge for the night as a reward for helping to tidy up. You all had gladly agreed. Sokka was still singing 90’s anthems to entertain you all and you weren’t the only ones tidying up. It was rather fun, really.

When you arrived at the house you didn’t really take in the details. You were shown a room and fell into the bed, fast asleep before your head hit the pillow.

#atla fanfic #atla zuko #smau #avatar: tla #zuko x y/n #zuko x reader

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Eight: New Year, new me III

We nearly missed breakfast. As the very last student we walked into the Great Hall to grab the rest of the Sunday buffet. None of us looked truly alive but the adrenaline of sharing a secret and the excitement of maybe running into Crick had us all on edge.

The Potter-posse was nowhere to be seen when we sat down and dug in but waited for us on the steps when we walked back into the foyer. They weren’t the only ones, though. Magnus leaned against the wall and waved Chloe over, Toby standing next to him. My heart dropped. Hopefully they would talk about something completely irrelevant and not me or Crick.

“I hear you’ve become quite the ladies’ man!”, Nica bellowed messing up Pettigrew’s hair.

“So, you told them”, he looked at me.

“Yep.”

“Everything?”, Remus asked cautiously.

“Yep!”

“Then we finally get to brag about our heroism! Killed me that we couldn’t do that yesterday!”, Potter cheered and pulled us all into the snowy courtyard, telling the story from his perspective – it nearly sounded creepy the way he described how Crick tried to kiss me – and giving all the girls sufficient time to ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’.

“And that is how us noble men saved the fair lady”, he ended.

“I’m so proud of you, James”, I applauded him. “You haven’t even exaggerated that much.”

“Hang on, did you just call me James? Are you feeling alright?”

“Yes, I am. I just figured after you have rescued me from a truly uncomfortable situation and provided shelter for me, it would only be a token of my gratefulness and respect to use your first name.” That wasn’t completely true. Not a lie necessarily, but not the truth either. I had decided to call Sirius Sirius and I had decided to not tell any of the girls that I knew he lived with the Potters. So, I had to come up with a reason to call him by his first name and this was the best I had. Besides, I was grateful. And I did respect all of them.

“Honoured!”

“Does that go for all of us?”

“It does, Peter, if you’re okay with it.”

“Absolutely.”

“Won’t change anything for me, I guess. You already call me Remus all the time.”

“I could go with Remus John. Or Rems.”

“Remus is fine, thanks.”

“And obviously the honourable man who took a hit for you for will be referred to by his given name”, Milla cleverly directed the conversation towards the question we all had. To be perfectly honest I hadn’t thought about what Sirius might have done to get punched by Crick until I retold the story but I now really wanted to know. I was properly shocked to hear that their conversation had gotten physical but Sirius had made a point of not telling me what he did to get his bloody lip. When he pushed Crick away from me he was calm and calculated, but I reckoned Crick would have not punched him without provocation.

“Obviously”, I answered.

“Why did he punch you?”, Blair asked quickly.

Sirius extinguished his cigarette.

“Why does it matter?”

“Because a) we don’t know Crick to be violent and b) we didn’t think you would take it without striking back”, Blair answered.

“I didn’t ‘strike back’, he sarcastically stretched the last two words “because I figured Cricket was already feeling like shit.”

“Okay, and how did you get that busted lip?”

“I said something he didn’t like to hear.”

“Come on! What did you say?”, Nica whined.

He still wouldn’t look at me. Not once since we’d been out here. Now, he hesitated to answer, scuffing his feet. I was sure that he would have normally used his soul-seeing eyes to get my approval or okay but he didn’t.

“I really don’t think it matters.” He abruptly walked through us, bumping into Remus and Milla and went back to the castle.

“What the hell?”

“He’s been weird recently”, James explained. “Don’t focus on that too much. Reckon he’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“You know what he said, right?”, Milla bat her doll eyes at Remus, frowning in the cutest way possible. Stellar performance.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that!”

“But I’m really curious! And Jette feels bad about it.”

Remus looked at me. “You do?”

“Of course, I do. Felt bad about all of it. Feel bad about all of it. I didn’t want my naiveté to cause anybody any harm…”

“For the one thousandth time: Not your fault”, Peter said, stern face and voice.

“Just tell them, man”, James demanded. “They’ll be bugging us about it anyway and he’s just being dramatic.”

“You tell them.”

“Fine! Cricket kept going on about how de… Jette – feels weird to say that –“

“I know. We’ll all get used to it.”

“… how Jette was a tease and did all of it on purpose. He got really angry. Sirius told him to calm down and asked whether he honestly believed Jette would do that. But that didn’t help and Cricket got even more furious and called you some nasty names, apparently”, James said, head turned to me, face apologetic.

“Sirius said something along the lines of: “No wonder she doesn’t want you if that’s what you think of her. You don’t deserve her. ‘And that was the last straw and Cricket hit him.”

I stared at him open-mouthed.

“He didn’t!”

“You saw the lip Milla, it wasn’t there before he took Cricket away.”

“Not what I mean. Crick didn’t really call her a slut, did he?”

“Sirius didn’t give us the details. But something like that I’m sure.”

Not only did he get beat because he helped me out. He also got beat because he defended me. I had expected him to have told Crick that I wasn’t worth the drama. Not that he didn’t deserve me. Good thing I told him that people didn’t give him enough credit when he still talked to me. I hadn’t given him enough credit. Not by a long shot.

“Has he gone mental?” Nica’s yelling got me out of my head and I closed my mouth. “He’s known her her whole life, he knows that she’s as much a slut as skunk!”

“Thanks, love. But he was really upset. I don’t think he meant it.”

“Sounds like you haven’t talked to him yet”, Peter found.

“Not since New Year’s.”

“Your decision or his?”, Peter asked on.

“Both I’d say. I don’t even know where to begin and he probably still hates me. Jonas said he’d calm down but I doubt it. Couldn’t wait to get away from me after Dad dropped us off at the station.”

I heard their voices shouting and arguing before I even entered the foyer. I knew that it was them before I saw them.

“Are you really that thick!?! Of course that’s what she’d say. As if she’d admit to it!”

“You know her! As if she’d ever do it!”

“Why would Crick lie?”

“He doesn’t on purpose, you idiot. He’s hurt. He’s overreacting.”

“So, you’re taking her side? You think what she’s done is okay?”

“Not falling for someone who fell for you? Yeah, that’s okay!”

“What about her leading him on?”

“Mer-lin! She didn’t! Or did you see her do that?”

Magnus fell silent for a moment to think whether he had and I used the opportunity jump in between them.

“Chloe, you promised me you wouldn’t argue about it. Please, just agree with him and be together and be happy.”

“He thinks you kept Crick on the hook for kicks!”

“So, what? I really don’t care, Chloe. I know that Crick hates me. I expect him to convey that to his friends. Magnus is a good friend. He believes what Crick says. Just agree with him and be done with it.”

“But you didn’t do that, Jette!”

“Chloe, please! I don’t need to ruin anybody else’s January. Crick’s fuming, Sirius’ got a bloody lip, Jonas is all awkward. You two will not fall victim to this goddamn drama! As soon as Crick doesn’t give me looks of death anymore, I’ll talk to him and try to clear it up. Until then I’m perfectly fine with Magnus and Toby wishing the Dragon pocks upon me as long as you’re still his”, I vaguely gestured at Mag. “girlfriend.”

Not waiting for an answer I pulled her with me by her arm, leaving Mag and the rest of our friends behind. I dragged her into the common room, made her promise again that she would not argue with Mag over me and went up to my dorm. I was not perfectly fine with Magnus and Toby wishing the Dragon pocks. I hated it. Just like I hated Crick looking at me in disgust. Just like I hated Sirius not looking at me at all. Just like I hated Jonas avoiding me. Just like I hated keeping secrets from and lying to my friends.

I kept hating all of that for the next three weeks. Because for those next three weeks it all stayed the same. Mag and Toby were mad at me, Crick looked at me like I was some disgusting insect, Sirius ignored my existence, Jonas avoided me and I had to keep secrets from my friends. In order to not keep lying to them, though, especially after they noticed that Sirius ignored me and asked me about it, I became quite the loner.

In the beginning I made up excuses to head back to the common room after meals and smoke at the terrace instead of going with the rest. But by the second week I didn’t say anything anymore.

I had volunteered for all the things in the prefect meetings and taken on more nightshifts than I needed, just to have excuses to get away and be quiet a lot of the time. To keep busy and alone in the weekends I hardly did any of my homework through the week, so I had to do it then. The time I gained by that on week nights I spent either reading in my bed, chatting to Felix or writing to my parents. Actually, for the first time since homesickness-stricken first year I wrote lengthy letters home. In the first one I had explained what had happened with Crick and all the consequences. Turned out that Mr and Mrs Cricket had heard all of it from Jonas on the first of January and informed my parents immediately. They told me to keep my head up and hope for the best.

The second one was only addressed to Dad. Although I thought that he had told Mum all about Sirius but I didn’t want to feel the risk. I asked him what his pretermitting me meant and how I should deal with it. He said he didn’t know. That I should probably ask him that. Assure him that I was his friend. Stuff like that.

The only good thing that came from all this heartache was that Chloe and Magnus stopped arguing when I disappeared into isolation. I didn’t really know why but I was happy about it. Those two were meant to be together. But I loved Chloe for being on my side.

“Protego!” Joe’s Tarantallegra didn’t hit me. We were going through the common defences and counter jinxes in Defence against the Dark Arts.

“Locomotor Mortis!” He reacted well too late and his legs got locked in their current position. I gave Joe a moment to think of the counter jinx but he gave up quickly and shot me a look.

“Mitterio”, I waved my wand at him.

In his next attempts he threw arrows and ropes at me which I easily countered with two Impedimenta-spells before I had him laughing on the ground and disarmed.

“Very nice, Miss de Witt, very nice. Go on like this and your practical OWL should be a walk through the park.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Joe had used Professor Horton’s interruption to throw the Pimple jinx at me and it worked but hardly long enough to even register. “Finite Incatatem!”

“Oppugno!” I pointed my wand at my empty bag first and Joe second but his Protego worked out this time.

“By the Sirens, Jette, give me a break”, he huffed, smiling, clearly impressed with himself.

“Sure.”

“Miss de Witt” Professor Horton came over to my desk. “You know that there are extra points in the practical exam for conjuring a Patronus, don’t you.”

“Indeed, Sir, I do.”

“Why don’t you give this a read while Mr Fox catches his breath. I think you’ll find it understandable and not too challenging.” He handed me parchment with instructions and illustrations on how to produce a Patronus.

“I think you’re more than capable of getting those extra points. At least for conjuring a non-corporal one.”

“Thank you, Sir. I appreciate it.”

I studied the illustrations first. Nothing overly complicated. Hold out the wand in front of you, arm fully extended. Once your Patronus had materialised you could direct it with your wand to wherever you wanted it to be. Simple enough. On to the instructions.

“To conjure a Patronus one has to focus all positive energy into the spell. This can be done most effectively when thinking of a happy if not the happiest memory one has. It seems important to note that said memory mustn’t be tainted by melancholy, sadness, nostalgia or any other negative feeling. Alternatively one can manufacture a happy scene in one’s head. In this case the scene should be imagined to every last tiny detail, including the voices of present people, every leave in the background and the position of the sun and the cast shadows. One needs a vivid imagination to conjure a Patronus with such a thought. Once the happiest memory is fully formed before one’s inner eye, the wand is raised to stretched arm and the charm’s formula Expecto Patronum is spoken. This is the very moment the memory needs to be visible, audible and felt as this is the moment the positive energy is concentrated into the spell. If the memory was strong enough and the caster concentrated enough the Patronus will now appear, either in corporal or in non-corporal form. The corporal Patronus is the strongest of Patroni, capable of providing protection against most offensive spells and very capable of keeping a dementor at bay. Corporal Patroni take the shape of whatever creature best represents the caster’s personality or values. A non-corporal Patronus manifests as silvery dust or mist and is a weaker version of the charm. While lesser attacks can be successfully avoided, not all offensive spells can be warded off. Furthermore, a non-corporal Patronus can sometimes be useful against dementors but not always. A Patronus is directed to defend by pointing the wand at whatever danger one finds oneself in.”

I read the parchment several times while Professor Horton took it upon himself to partner up with Joe. A happy memory. The happiest memory. I took a moment to concentrate.

The ceiling was a dark purple, pink clouds spattered upon it, the moon already visible, the sun not yet fully disappeared. It was breathtaking. I took next to Milla holding her hand. Behind us were four huge tables, filled with students of all ages. Crick sat at the second from the left, wearing a yellow tie, Tristan to his left, Jonas to his right. He had smiled and given us a thumbs-up when we had followed Professor McGonnagal through the path in the middle of the Great Hall. The closer the professor got to the letter S on her sorting list, the harder Milla and I squeezed each other’s hands. Since August we had assured each other that we were too similar and too good friends to be sorted into different houses. It was impossible. Then, again, we saw a set of twins with the last name Brown be sorted into two Ravenclaw and Slytherin respectively. Twins were probably as alike as possible. “Scribe-Anderson, Milla!” A last squeeze, then I let go of her hand. She walked up to the chair calm and collected on the outside but I knew that she was going just as crazy as I was. The hat was placed on her and fell silent. Milla mumbled to herself, pulling her forehead in wrinkles. “Hufflepuff!”, the high but enormously loud voice yelled through the hall. Crick’s table applauded and stood up. Milla smiled in relief, grinned at me and took her seat between Tristan and Crick at the yellow table. Part one of our plan had been a success. We wanted to be in the same house as all the Crickets. They were like brothers anyways and we wouldn’t be fully alone in the quest to navigate the terrifyingly big castel. Part two of the mission was to get me into Hufflepuff as well. Milla had done her job. Now only I could screw it up. I got more nervous by the minute watching the T’s, U’s and V’s all take their seat on the little stool and getting sorted. “de Witt, Jette!” She didn’t pronounce my name right. She’d said Dooit. Whatever, I thought, more important matters to attend to. I hoped I looked as cool as Milla when I walked up to the little podium but I doubted it. Professor McGonnagal gave me a surprisingly warm smile, then the Great Hall disappeared when the big hat fell over my eyes. “Interesting, interesting. Both parents Hufflepuffs, but grandparents in Ravenclaw and Gryffindor… A strong need for harmony, for companionship. You don’t like being alone.” I shook my head. I didn’t. “Your friends are important to you. You’d let nothing ever happen to them, hm? And I see a strong sense of justice in you. Of tolerance. A need for equality. Will you do the best you can in your classes?” I nodded. Of course I would. This was the coolest thing ever. I wanted to do well and learn as much as humanly possible. “Well, then, I think it’s safe to say that you’re a HUFFLEPUFF!” My face lit up. Hufflepuff. Like Milla. Like Crick. Like Jonas. Like Tristan. I would be with my family. Thank Merlin. I jumped off the stool and skipped over to the applauding table, got pulled into a hug by Jonas and high-fived by Tristan. Milla beamed and pushed Crick away so we could sit next to each other. “Told you everything would be fine, Libby, haven’t I? We’ll be best friends and siblings for the next six years. Nothing will ever get between us, I promise”, Crick said when he offered me some pumpkin juice. I believed him.

I concentrated hard on that feeling lightness and joy and relief when I had been sorted in the only house that was a real option for me. I raised my wand, took another moment and said the spell. Absolutely nothing happened. Nothing of interest, that is. I realised that my eyes had started burning and a lump had built in my throat.

He’d promised nothing would ever come between us. Seemed I wasn’t the only who lied. I fought back the tears and forced myself to regain my composure. The last thing I needed right now was a nervous breakdown in front of 30 students.

For the fifth time I read the instructions on the parchment. The memory mustn’t be tainted by melancholy, sadness, nostalgia or any other negative feeling. Should have taken that into account. With the state I was in at the moment every memory that had Crick in it would be tainted by nostalgia, melancholy, anger, despair, the urge to yell at him and longing for better times. No chance to cast a Patronus with a memory that starred him.

That basically knocked out at least 90% of all my memories. Crick had been a constant in my life just like Mum, Dad and Felix. Or Milla. What was left? A couple of holidays my family had taken, none of them bad but none of them the happiest memory either. Those were out. I loved going on holiday but the feeling I had when I knew I was going to sleep in the same room as Milla and eat every meal with my ‘brothers’ was practically unbeatable.

Head on my desk I ignored the shouting and laughing around me, trying to find a memory that would come even close to the one that had just nearly made me cry. Was there any.

“Look out!”

“Protego!” Pure instinct. I heard the scream and felt a little breeze and conjured the protective invisible wall without even thinking and before I had looked up. No thirty centimetres in front of me on eyelevel floated a chair, legs pointed at me. Who was so stupid as to throw chairs at their friends? “Finite Incatatem.” The chair fell to the ground with a lot of noise that was even louder because the entire class had stopped duelling to watch me get impaled by dumb piece of wooden craftsmanship.

“Impressive display of reflex, Miss de Witt. And impressive execution of the protection spell. 20 points to Hufflepuff.” He addressed the rest of the class. “Take note. This is excellent defence and a guaranteed “O” in your OWL exam. This kind of quick thinking and self-preservation is at the core of your lessons for Defence against the Dark Arts. Now, don’t stand around! On you go and practice.”

Chloe and Blair came over.

“Wow. I knew you were good but I didn’t know you could do all those spells in your sleep”, Blair grinned at me. I weakly smiled back. It had been forever since we’d had an actual conversation. My self-inflicted isolation hadn’t given us many opportunities.

“Thanks, mate.”

“I thought McAllen would blind you!”, Chloe gasped. “Idiot! If you don’t know how to use the goddammn spell, then don’t.” She quickly punished him with a very disapproving look. He still stood frozen in place.

“Poor thing”, Blair found.

“Oi, McAllen, I’m fine. No hard feelings, okay? Just practice with pillows for the time being, yeah?” He looked at me in shock. I smiled as warmly and reassuringly as I could manage and he slowly unfroze.

“Shit, de Witt, I’m sorry, man. I meant to use the jacket.” Well, he would not apply to the auror offices any time soon, that was certain.

“It’s all good. Don’t sweat it.”

“He’s got you on Patroni?”, Chloe asked, my parchment in hands.

“Yeah, but it’s gonna take a while before that’ll ever work.”

“I don’t think so. You’re excellent at Defence.”

“Be that as it may, most of my happy memories have Crick in them. So, not exactly untainted…”

“Still no progress on that front then?”, Blair rubbed my back while she exchanged looks with Chloe. They were worried. Of course they were. They were good friends and had more than just noticed that I kind of fled the room whenever they entered.

“Nope. He still looks at me like I’m the love child of a ghoul and a mountain troll.” Chloe snorted. “Charming picture.”

“He’ll come around. Mag’s already coming around to the idea that you might not be an evil bitch but just an unobservant naïve little thing. And if he does, so will Crick.” A flicker of hope lit up in my heart.

“That’d be great”, I admitted.

Horton shooed them away to get back to duelling and I looked back down at the Patronus instructions. What other really good days had I had? Moments of pure delight?

The first thing that came to mind was the last Saturday before Christmas break. No worries, a snowball fight, a couple rounds of quidditch and some sneaking around in secret passages before going to a glamorous party. That was a really good day. But before I really had chosen a still from that day to use as an inspiration for my Patronus, I realised that it would be just as useless as the memory of my sorting. Negative feelings. Sirius had been with us that entire day. Sirius who wouldn’t look at me, who wouldn’t speak to me, who decided I didn’t exist. Sirius who had moved in with the Potters because his own parents had raised their fists to him, and probably their wands. Sirius who didn’t want anyone to know. Sirius who seemed to think I wasn’t trustworthy.

That memory would never work as an untainted happy one.

Alternatively one can manufacture a happy scene in one’s head. In this case the scene should be imagined to every last tiny detail, including the voices of present people, every leave in the background and the position of the sun and the cast shadows. One needs a vivid imagination to conjure a Patronus with such a thought.

A vivid imagination I had. The nightmares that had tortured me ever since the new year had begun were proof of that. I was either chased down the forest path between Marlow’s Creek and Godric’s Hollow by Crick yelling all kinds of insults at me and grabbing me; or I stood in a dimly lit room with black and green walls watching two faceless figurines with shrieking voices fire spells and jinxes and curses at Sirius who lay on the floor screaming in pain, begging for them to stop, blood all over his face.

In that second dream I was never able to move. I couldn’t help I was absolutely useless and just watched Sirius scream and sob in agony. A mind that can come up with such twisted scenarios had to be capable of imagining a detailed happy scene. Maybe I should give that a go.

“Okay, wands down!” Horton yelled and restored the class room to its usual state by a wave of his wand.

“In the next lesson we’ll continue. I’d like you all to hand in a three foot essay on your strongest and your weakest offensive and defensive spells, then. I’d like to do some individual work with each of you in the next weeks. Class dismissed!”

I packed my bag in record time and rushed to the front table to hand back the parchment.

“Oh, no, keep it. Use it to practice. I’d love to see you conjure a Patronus in that exam.”

“Thank you, Sir. I would, too.”

I pushed the parchment in my backpack and walked out the classroom and to the staircase without taking notice of my surroundings. That had become my new routine. If you don’t see your friends waiting for you, you can’t feel bad for ignoring them.

I entered one of the secret passages the boys had shown us to make it to lunch without having to navigate all the first years that would block the staircases and was about to illuminate my wand when I heard voices and froze in place.

“I cannot believe that it’s just the Crick-thing. Why would she run from us if she has trouble with him?” Blair.

“We all usually came as a combi deal. I mean, for the price of one Scribe-Anderson you got three Crickets and two de Witts. And she definitely saw me talk to him a couple of weeks ago.” Milla.

She was right. I had seen her and Crick talk and laugh in the common room that day. They seemed like nothing had changed between them and I didn’t want to ruin that. It had been the last drop. When I saw that I decided to keep to myself for a while.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Nica.

“Maybe she doesn’t run from us, maybe she runs from Crick. Crick, who usually comes with a free Milla. Milla who usually comes with a free threepack of friends.”

“But we’re not always with Crick.” Chloe.

“She should know that her chances of running into Crick are like zero when we’re with James, Remus, Peter and Sirius.” When had Chloe switched to using their first names?

“That’s why I said that it’s not just Crick. Since the break Sirius and Jette don’t talk, haven’t you noticed? They used to have those little private conversations all the time an now they don’t even say hello.”

“Remus says that they were gossiping about him and me, when they did that whispering thing. They tried to get us together. Maybe now that we actually have a date there’s no need for that anymore.”

“Even if that’s true, why would they stop talking all together?”, Blair asked and I imagined her imitating McGonnagal’s inquisitive look. An art that she had perfected.

“I bet something happened over break”, Nica commented.

“A lot happened over break”, Chloe shot back.

“I mean something neither one of them is telling us. Maybe they had a fight, maybe they snogged. But something happened I’m telling you. Otherwise she wouldn’t dodge every single human being she knows.”

Touché, Nica. That was nearly spot on. I suddenly felt bad eavesdropping on them and backed out of the passage to take the crowded stairs. At lunch Felix had saved me a seat and I joined the lively discussion he and his friends had about the next quidditch game: Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw. It would take place the weekend after Valentine’s and wasn’t that far away anymore.

When I got up to go for a smoke I passed the girls who had changed subjects and were now planning their day in Hogsmeade. Milla would finally go on that long awaited date with Remus in less than 24 hours and the rest wanted to spill their Christmas money. I had homework to do and thirdyears to tutor. Besides, I was to work the nightshift on Sunday and needed to rest up for that. None of my friends had bought that story but they also hadn’t succeeded in changing my mind.

I was dying to find out whether Milla and Remus would get it together and I would have loved to spy on them in Hogsmeade but everybody would be in the village, from Crick to the Potter-posse and I didn’t need that.

I would have a quiet day in and then interrogate Milla about hers as soon as she got back. While in my head thinking, I didn’t notice where I was going and was rather surprised when I found myself in the courtyard, cigarette in hand. ‘The might of routine”, my mother would have said. I looked around myself. Nobody in sight that would pose a threat to my fragile peace of mind. I inhaled the smoke and instantly the tension in my neck loosened up a bit.

Eyes closed and head rotating I must have stood there for a couple of minutes.

“It’s alive!” I jumped at the voice.

“Hansel, Gretel and the ginger bread house!! You scared the hell out of me, Peter!”

“And it speaks.”

While I had tried to calm down and not be a nervous wreck my friends had obviously gone on their after-meal-date. All of them looked at me. All of them but Sirius.

“Of course it speaks. It always has”, I answered, trying to not sound panicked.

“Thought you’d had enough of us, now that we’ve become noble heroes. Thought maybe we weren’t interesting or exciting anymore.”

“Oh, shush. You know that’s not true. I’m just under the weather from that whole… you know. I’m still as charmed and fascinated by you as ever.” I blew James a kiss. It felt good to be here with them and talk nonsense. I had really missed that over the last few weeks.

“Good. Good. That’s good.”

“Horton has Jette doing Patroni now. As the only one in the whole class”, Blair said proudly, obviously trying to keep me with them by engaging me in the conversation.

“Nice!”, Remus raised his hand for a high-five. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty badly. Turns out most of my happy memories involve Crick and when I think of him I’m not really capable of concentrating my positive energy.”

“Well, that’s just insulting!”, James bellowed.

“How much fun have you had with us, hm? Most of your happy memories should include us, not that sulking baboon.” I smiled.

“I have a lot of happy memories including you, but I’m afraid they’re not as powerful as… I don’t know… first day of school or when I got my first broom. He was there for all of those things.”

“Fair enough.”

“If you need help with the charm, though, I’m sure Sirius would help you out. He got an impossible score on his OWLs last year because his Patronus was perfect. Should be worth a try to learn from the best”, Peter suggested. I hesitated for moment. Sirius had still not recognised my existence. Then I decided that I enjoyed conversations like these and being surrounded by my friends too much to live in isolation because he had a problem he didn’t even tell me about.

“Would you mind helping me out? I mean I’ll give it another go and look through my diaries to think of a good memory but if that doesn’t help could I beg you to take pity on me?” I hoped it sounded sarcastic like usually. Hoped it showed him that we were friends. But he stoically watched the ivy on the other wall and exhaled smoke.

“Sirius? Would you mind?”, I tried again, now a little louder. Still nothing.

“I’m asking you a question.” I was audibly irritated. No, I was fuming. I had done nothing to deserve this childish punishment.

“By Merlin’s Beard, Sirius, we all know that you can me hear me. If you can’t stand the sight of me, fine, but at least have the decency to tell me no.” No reaction at all. Like I was a bird chirping in the distance.

“This is ridiculous, do you realise that? I’ve done nothing wrong! I was just there. I didn’t even ask the stupid question. That was my dad. And he only made small-talk, he was being polite. The one who actually told me – no him! – was Euphemia and I doubt that you neither can nor should be mad at her, because she had no bad intentions whatsoever. But the one person you can’t blame for anything is me, Sirius! I was just there! And I didn’t know what she would answer, how could I? If I’d known I’d just left that damn kitchen. I didn’t know, though.

And I don’t see why you need to pretend that I don’t exist. It doesn’t make sense. What have I done to deserve that, huh? Nothing. It was obvious you didn’t want me to know and so I pretended I never did. But you had already decided that I wasn’t worth your time or attention anymore.”

“Oh no, that’s what this is about?”, James cut me off.

“I didn’t even think of that”, Remus commented. “Never realised it was news to her.”

“What d’you want me to do? I’ve already tried pretending it never happened, I’ve tried avoiding you – at a high cost, by the way because that meant I had to avoid basically of my friends – and counting this very interaction I’ve tried asking you to not shut me out.

And I’m done trying! I’m done sitting around alone. I’m done feeling absolutely terrible without even knowing why. I’m done with the nightmares and I’m done lying to my best friends. And that doesn’t mean I’ll tell them what I heard but I will answer their questions and I will be around, so you’ll have to deal with it! Okay?” Of course I didn’t even get so much as a flinch.

“Okay. Great. Glad we talked about it. Now who has a light that works?”

Peter lit me up, eyes darting between me and Sirius.

“Jette, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you didn’t know. If I had I’d straightened this one out weeks ago.”

“It’s not your fault, James.”

“It kind of is.” James aggressively dragged Sirius away from us and started quietly shouting at him. Remus hugged me.

“Tell me he is not the reason you kept away.”

“Well, him and Crick. Hard to avoid the both of them without avoiding you.”

“He’s an idiot. And so are we. It didn’t even register that it happened.”

“Again, not your fault.”

“What is even going on?”, Milla asked, hugging me. “What on earth was this all about?”

“Not my story to tell, Milla.”

“But…”

“ It’s his business and he obviously wants no one to know. I might be done attempting to be his friend but I still have principles.”

“Did you say nightmares?” Peter had sat down on the stone bench and didn’t even look at me.

“I honestly don’t know what I said, Pete.”

“Do you have nightmares because of it?”, he rephrased his question.

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you all have not yet gotten rid of me!”

“I think it matters.” Peter got up and joined James and Sirius who were now standing at the staircase to the owlry, both gesturing a lot with their arms, obviously arguing.

“Will nobody clue us in?”, Chloe wanted to know after a while.

“All of this happens and we don’t get to know why or how?”

“Jette’s right. It’s not our place. He’ll come ‘round.” Remus absentmindedly played with Milla’s hair, before he joined his friends.

Under normal circumstances we would have all freaked out about that little gesture of intimacy and affection but there were other matters to attend to.

“I mean you could’ve just told us that something was up if you didn’t want to spill a secret”, Blair started but the bell rang and they had to get to their second to last Astrology class. I stayed behind staring at the doors to the foyer. Then I looked back at the boys, all engaged in a very passionate discussion.

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #remus lupin #sirius black #peter pettigrew #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

Text

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Eight: New Year, new me II

The ride home was pretty quiet. Potter had fetched me from upstairs after our dads had sufficiently looked at the car and asked me if I was fine. I lied and told him I was. I quickly thanked Mr and Mrs Potter for their kindness, waved vaguely at the boys and practically ran to the car.

“I take it you didn’t know that boy lived there?”, Dad said when we had left the Potters’ street.

“Nope.”

“Fleamont said you were friends.”

“We are.”

“But he didn’t tell you about his moving in with them.”

“Nope.”

“Huh. I didn’t catch his last name.”

“Black.” Dad went pale and he gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. Dad hardly ever told me about his work but I knew that he healed children. Maybe he’d seen Black when he was younger. On the other hand maybe he just knew the Blacks. After all they were one of the Sacred 28 and infamous in the magical community. Whatever it was, I guessed that he came to the same conclusion I had drawn. The rest of the twenty minute drive we spent in silence.

At home I hugged Mum, wished her a happy new year and was endlessly grateful to dad for sending me up to my room. I imagined he’d tell Mum what we had just witnessed. I fell on my bed and started crying. How dared they treat him like that? How dared they chase him out of his home? How dared they lay a hand on him?

By the time I calmed down the last daylight had been gone for hours and I had another epiphany. This could get very awkward. God, I hoped it wouldn’t get awkward.

It did get awkward. We were due back at platform 9 ¾ on the fifth which meant that I had a very weird four days. While Potter wrote me daily telling me his parents loved meeting me and my dad and that they’d like to have all of us over for dinner sometime and inviting me to shenanigans with him and the boys, I was constantly thinking about that stone face of Sirius’ that told me to keep my distance if I cared for my life. I had started calling him Sirius in my mind on the second of January realising that I would hate to be referred to by the last name of people who tortured me.

Given that I did care for my life I politely thanked Potter for all of his invitations but declined them saying my mother had planned family fun before she had to let Felix and me go again. The Sirius drama had me completely forget about the debacle with Crick that happened just hours earlier. But it was brought back with all its might when on the morning of the fifth, while I was downing my last cup of coffee, the doorbell rang and Jonas and Crick followed Felix into the kitchen. Right. My parents were dropping us off again. All of us. Yay.

I hadn’t spoken to Crick this year and to be perfectly honest I had forgotten that there was anything to talk about as my mind prioritised abusive parents over awkward declarations of love. Jonas looked at me as if he had stomach cramps when walked in while Crick rejected the idea of even looking in my general direction. Lovely.

Against all tradition I jumped into the front seat next to dad, forcing Jonas to sit in the back, so, I would at least not be mushed up against Crick. Felix obviously sensed that something was up but was wise enough to shut his mouth while we were all in the car for two hours and with dad.

For the 1000th time in the past couple of days I wished that Milla would have returned to Marlowe’s Creek before going to London but her parents had decided to get a couple days of sightseeing in and I hadn’t seen her yet. Milla would have known what to do about Crick. How to break the ice. How to get things back to normal. Whether she could’ve helped with the Sirius-thing I didn’t know. But while I sat in silence on my to London I realised that I couldn’t tell Milla about the Sirius-thing. He obviously didn’t want me to know about his living with the Potter’s which probably meant he didn’t want any of us to know. And what kind of a friend would I be if I just told his secret to the next best person. No, this was one problem I had to solve without my horde of best friends.

I would tell them about Crick, though. Despite the fact that I could already hear Nica’s triumphant “I told you so”s I needed them to help me out. It seemed that I managed to turn away to good friends within 12 short hours and I wanted both of them back. I would never achieve that on my own.

If I had thought that the car ride was awkward, I was really naïve. We kissed dad goodbye in the parking lot and trotted into the station without him, so he could get back to Mum. Jonas pulled Crick into a jog, while Felix held me back.

“What in the name of Merlin’s saggy balls his going on?”, he asked with an arched eyebrow that made him look exactly like Mum’s.

“Long story”, I sighed.

“I reckoned. What happened at the Raven?”

“Long story”, I repeated while running into the wall between platforms 9 and 10.

“I have time, you know. And I might be helpful.”

“I know, I know. But I’m going to tell the girls, too, and I really don’t want to go through it twice. You’re welcome to sit in our compartment, though.”

“Deal. I’ll find the boys and tell them. Don’t leave me hanging.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He rushed away in disappeared in the sea of parents, students and cages. I decided that it would be safest to first find a compartment to place my stuff in and claim it. Maybe I would just sit in it until the train got going, looking for the others on the platform and waving them into me. That way I would neither have to talk to or see Crick nor Sirius.

My genius plan got foiled by Chloe and Magnus who spotted me just as I was about to enter the train and pulled down from the stairs.

“Happy New Year!”, Chloe screamed in my ear. “Did you like your Christmas present? How was that party you went to? Did you see the Potter-posse? Have you found Milla, Nica and Blair yet?”

“Ehm… no. Happy New Year.” She laughed at my apparent confusion. “Tell you what, Chloe, I’m gonna get my stuff in one of the compartments and tell every idiot that wants to sit there that it’s taken and you find Milla, Nica and Blair? Sound good?”

“Sure. You okay?” She inspected my face.

“Yes, just tired”, I lied.

“See you in a bit then.” I gave Magnus a quick hug and mumbled some wishes for the new year. Then I climbed the steps into wagon and shoved my trunk, bag and jacket in the first empty compartment I could find, before I collapsed onto the seats. I had never before lied to Chloe. I had never before not pranced around the platform looking for all my friends. I had never before not walked through the barrier without Crick and Jonas. I had never before slept bad because of nightmares of abusive parents. This was promising to be the worst year of them all.

For the I-didn’t-know-how-many-th time I just sat there with my head in my hands when the compartment door opened and I heard the jolly laughter of my friends. My head jerked up and I forced myself to smile hugging all of the girls telling them how much I had missed them. When I got to Milla who entered last I saw that Remus towered behind her and I also spotted some messy black hair.

“Are you avoiding us, de Witt? My parents aren’t that bad, now, are they?”, Potter laughed as he quickly hugged me with one arm, squeezing into the compartment with Pettigrew and… Sirius. While Pettigrew hugged me enthusiastically and Remus threw me a kiss, Sirius failed to acknowledge my existence. The girls put their luggage away and sat on the benches, Potter and Remus mushed between them, Pettigrew happily sitting on the floor in front of Potter and Sirius leaning against the window. I watched them all chitter and chatter away, noticing that Sirius did his best to avoid looking at me.

“Hey, I asked you something, Jette!” Milla pulled at the sleeve of my jumper.

“Sorry, what?”

“How did you meet Potter’s parents?”

“Can I tell you in a minute? I was so busy saving the compartment, I didn’t get to smoke and I’ll go crazy if I won’t before we take off.” I checked Chloe’s watch. Enough time. I didn’t wait for her to answer and fled the train, positioning myself in a way that I couldn’t look through the window, so they in turn wouldn’t be able to see me.

I was just starting to pull myself together when Remus came out of nowhere, cigarette in hand.

“You haven’t told them about Cricket, yet?”

“Nope. Didn’t seem like the thing you write in a letter, four times. I thought I’d do it on the ride over but if you want to stay close”, I couldn’t help but smile and notch him in the side causing him to blush “I’ll tell them tonight after dinner. No big deal.”

“I actually think we need to discuss some more prank schedules. Guess, we’ll be out of the way within the first hour.” I pretended to be very interested in the structural integrity of the steel beams above us but I felt Remus stare at me.

“Have you been avoiding us?”, he finally asked.

“I thought after Cricket was out of question and Milla rushed from Big Ben to the Tower you’d like to come over to the Potters’. Hang out a bit. Process New Year’s Eve.”

“Yeah, I know. I would have. But my mum got a little overprotective when she found out that I hadn’t gone home with Crick. She went all ‘empty-nest-syndrome’ and had Felix and me on lock-down. Was nothing personal.”

I also didn’t think that I had ever lied this blatantly to Remus, before.

“Jette, if we did anything wrong, you know you could tell us, right. We’d listen, we wouldn’t get mad. We just thought that it would be the best course of action to have you stay in that room, knowing you were safe and not alone or getting lost with us. I don’t think any of us considered that after the thing with Cricket you might not be comfortable sleeping in an unknown house surrounded by a bunch of boys. We didn’t mean you any…”

“Shut up! I know all that. How dare you think you did anything wrong? I promise I’m not avoiding you and I promise I haven’t. I slept like a baby that night and I did feel safe. Also, your shirts smell like chocolate which is the best thing ever!”, I smiled up at him, hoping he wouldn’t detect the guilt I felt. Then I pulled him into a tight hug to make sure he understood how utterly grateful I were to him and his friends for having rescued me and for not having let me alone. I needed him to understand that.

“Shutting up”, he grinned. The high pitched whistle of the Hogwarts express had everybody still on the platform cover their ears and Remus and I went back into our compartment.

Blair offered me her lap to sit on and for the next two and a half hours I pretended that I wasn’t going crazy over two boys and two secrets and that I loved discussing alpine landscapes or quidditch equipment. But I think I held it together well enough.

The only silver lining was that Remus and Milla sat very close to each other and didn’t seem to care that their shoulders and hands regularly touched. This was going to be the one positive thing this year would have to show for, even if it was the death of me.

Observing those two love birds gave me the instinctive urge to look over at Sirius to exchange knowing looks or wiggle my eyebrows, indicating that we needed to have another one of our secret discussions about how to get them together. But when my eyes found him he looked at Remus and Milla smirking to himself.

Felix had come into the compartment forty minutes into the journey and while he first looked annoyed at the sight of all the boys, which meant that I would not confide in him, by now he thoroughly enjoyed himself listening to the stories that were told about the holidays. The minute he had come in I had grabbed him with some lame excuse and begged him to play along in my scheme about mum not letting us leave the house. He obviously didn’t understand why, but as he was the best brother in the whole entire world he agreed. Another first time ever. Never before had I made Felix lie for me. Not even when I really messed up. Or when I started smoking. Who was this year turning me into?

When the Potter-posse finally left and I breathed one huge sigh of relief, hoping to get one of the heavy weights of my chest, Chloe interrogated Milla about Remus which made my chances of talking to them in the next three hours about something else equal zero.

Milla seemed absolutely happy though, saying that Remus and she were going to Hogsmeade together at the next possible occasion and that she hoped they’d officially get together then. The entire apartment was squealing. Even Felix. Even me.

After he had heard enough about how cute Remus and Milla were, Felix took off again, not without letting me know that he still wanted answers. The last 180 minutes of the trip that were spent gushing over the prospect of having another couple in our ever extending group of friends had me relax at first. It felt like any other ride to Hogwarts after any other holiday. When Nica mentioned that Crick would get very protective over Milla once she got serious with Remus, took all that comfort and relaxation away, though. Crick. Damn, they would treat like always because I hadn’t yet told him about our little altercation and he would think they make fun of him or something like that. I had to make sure he knew they weren’t but I was absolutely not going to talk to him. That still terrified me.

A solution to that problem was found when an bodyless voice asked for all the fifth year prefects to report to the prefect compartment. I put on my robes and badge and walked over. Our head boys and girls were already waiting for us, explaining that we would have to take the first years to the carriages because they were not taking the boats again. They gave us huge wooden signs on sticks with our house crests on them and wished us good luck.

Right before they left I grabbed Jonas’ robes and held him back. Although he stopped instantly and turned around, the look he gave me – somewhere between annoyed and frustrated – had me doubt my plan to use as the middle man for a moment. Yes, he was one of my oldest friends and like a brother to me, but he was Crick’s real brother and I had just really hurt Crick. Blood was thicker than water. I knew I would not want anything to do with the girl who broke Felix’ heart. I sure as hell won’t help her talk to him and I’d much rather hex her than be polite to her. And it seemed Jonas felt the same way about his little brother.

I let go of his robe and took a couple of steps back. I couldn’t bear to look up at him and see the disgust in his face. “Never mind”, I mumbled. Instead of leaving the compartment, as I had expected, Jonas closed the distance between us.

“Always mind. You wanted something.”

“It’s nothing. Look, I forgot for a moment that you’re actually Crick’s brother and not mine. I forgot that you’re required to hate me. I’m sorry. I’ll… just… I’ll just leave.” I felt tears burning behind my eyes. How had I not though about losing Jonas and Tristan along with Crick until now?

“Nobody hates you, Libby. What do you need?” Jonas forced my head up to look at him. He was taken aback by the state of me and pulled me in a one-armed hug.

“You’re practically family, too. And you didn’t chose to not fall for Nate… again.” He grinned. I kissed him on the cheek and tried to regain my composure.

“How can I be of service, hm?”

“I just… Look, I haven’t told any of the girls – or Felix – about what happened on New Year’s. I didn’t feel like writing it down four times, thought I’d tell them on the train. But then Potter and his friends showed up and talked about anything but that and I didn’t want them to throw in their opinions and… the point is Milla, Chloe, Nica, Blair and Felix do not know what went down at the Raven. They’ll talk to Crick like nothing happened and I hoped that you could make sure he knows that? So, he won’t think they’re mocking him or whatever…

I would tell him myself but I doubt that he wants to talk to me after this morning…”

“Right…Right… I’ll tell him. Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll calm down in a few days and everything will be back to normal. When you told him you liked him you were awkward for what? A week? Two? Same will happen now.”

He squeezed my hand and left me in the compartment. A look out the window informed me that we were nearly at the station. I took up the very heavy Hufflepuff sign and decided to find my fellow prefect Hugo. It didn’t take much. He stood in the hallway in front of the compartment I had just left.

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

Generally speaking Hugo and I merely co-existed. We had classes together, we did things like this together and we really didn’t dislike each other but I doubt that I’d ever talked to him if he weren’t the other fifth year prefect. Waiting for the train to finally stop in silence was exactly what I needed and it was what we both preferred to do.

When the doors opened we jumped onto the platform and broke our comfortable silence by yelling. “Hufflepuff firstyears gather here, please!”

“First year of Hufflepuff, over here!”

“No boats! Hufflepuffs go this way!”

We knew how many first years there were and counted about 80 times, coming short by one each every time. The platform was basically empty when we found the last lost firstyear sitting on a bench, trying not to cry. After we assured him this would happen to everyone at some point – no, it didn’t – we ushered our young housemates to the last carriages and told them to get in with no more than six per coach.

We stood at the front of the row, instructing every passing carriage to go the Great Hall immediately for dinner and not to worry about the luggage as it would be taken to their dorms. Then we jumped in the last carriage with Rufus Laurie and Priyanka Patil, the Gryffindor prefects from our year to finally get out of the cold and into the warmth of the castle.

Dumbledore welcomed us back and skipped a lengthy speech in favour of a quick “Happy New Year. Enjoy your food!”

I sat between Chloe and Milla, Magnus right across from me, staring at me. At first I thought I had failed to eat my Spaghetti Napoli gracefully but after a minute or two it clicked: Magnus was one of Crick’s best friends. He probably already knew about New Year’s Eve. I leaned over to Chloe.

“Hey, can we go to the dorm immediately after dinner. I really need to talk to you guys.”

“I knew something was up. Of course. I’ll tell Blair and Nica.”

Convincing Milla to skip the smoke date didn’t work, so I agreed to go with the Potter-posse when they showed up at our table.

“Felix! My dorm, as soon as you get down, yeah?”

“Sure!”

“Do you want him to break his legs?”, Pettigrew asked when we left the Great Hall.

“Huh?”

“Asking him to come to your dorm. That slide will break his feet. James nearly lost a toe last time he tried to follow Evans up the stairs to the girls’ dorm.”

“What slide?”, Nica interrupted.

“The slide the stairs turn into when a boy tries to enter the girls’ dormitories.” Pettigrew rolled his eyes.

“Why would it do that?”

“To prevent co-mingling and fornication”, Potter grinned.

“Well, maybe yours do, but ours don’t. Anybody can go anywhere and whenever ‘fornication’ is detected the person who doesn’t belong in the dorm is locomotored out by some weird charm. That’s all.”

“Your boys can enter, no problem?”, Potter looked like he was ready to punch a giant.

“No problem”, I replied.

“What a joke! It’s like they don’t trust us!”

Potter and Sirius got into cussing Godric Gryffindor “or whoever else came up with that stupid idea!” while puffing their cigarettes and for a moment I thought that my Sirius problem had solved itself. But when I asked him for his lighter I was met with silence and neglect. Remus offered me his and tried not to look defeated.

We all smirked at Milla and Remus flirting a little more obviously than usual before hurrying back into the foyer, the common room and finally our dorm. Felix already sat on my bed, reading a textbook I had left on the desk.

“You took your time!”, he greeted us.

“Well, out with it, Jette, what’s so important I can’t properly say hello to my boyfriend?”, Chloe asked pretending to be upset, though she wasn’t.

“Funny you should mention Mag. I think he already knows about it.” They all were confused.

“Something happened with me and Crick on New Year’s Eve – No, Nica, nothing cute or great or wonderful – and I think Crick’s already told Magnus and Toby, and now I need to tell you and I don’t really know where to start, so…” I took a deep breath, focussed on the stars I could see sparkle on the dark night sky through the window.

“It all went well until midnight…”, I started. I took me two hours to tell the entire story, giving them every detail, since I fully let myself remember the whole night for the first time, answering a couple of questions here and there and ending with Sirius wishing me a happy new year. They didn’t need to know what had happened the next morning. Sirius clearly didn’t want any of us to know.

“You slept in Remus’ shirt?”, Milla asked as I had stopped talking.

“She tells you all that and that’s you first question?”, Blair snapped while Felix padded my back.

“Okay, as I said: Quite certain Mag and Toby know already. And I think that Crick tells the whole thing differently than me because he was convinced that I just toyed with him and took pleasure in hurting him – which I didn’t! I swear that I didn’t! I’m just naïve and blind and I didn’t know.”

“None of us think that you would do that on purpose”, Nica assured me. I smiled.

“I just mean that Magnus and Tobias probably don’t like me all that much at the moment. And I don’t want you”, I looked and pointed at Chloe, “to get into a fight with your boyfriend because I was too stupid to see what was going on. For all I care you tell him he’s right and you fully agree with him. This will not cause any more drama than it already has!”

“That’s nonsensical Mag should know that you’d nev…”

“No fighting about it, Chloe! I insist. If he brings it up, just agree or tell him that you want to stay out of it. Please! I already feel terrible I don’t need to be responsible for you two fighting.”

“Fine, but under protest and only because I love you.”

“Who else knows?”, Felix wanted to know.

“Well, you five, the Potter-posse, Mag and Toby – at least – and Jonas. And then Crick and me.”

“Guessing you’d like to keep it that way?”

“I don’t need the entire castle to know.”

“Done”, they all said and for the first time in days I felt light and loved and okay.

Obviously our night didn’t end with them agreeing to not talk about it to anyone else. There were too many details to get hung up on. One of those that none of us could truly let go was Margery the sex bomb who had chosen Peter Pettigrew to be her spontaneous date. We came back to that multiple times that night and during the following weeks.

But first of all we had to discuss Crick’s declaration of affection and his reaction to rejection. None of it seemed like him. I was not the only one who thought so. We talked in circles about how a dramatic gesture like kissing me at midnight was too out there for him, how we all expected him to more or less casually mention that he was smitten with someone over lunch. I came to the realisation that us going to the party together without any real intention to meet up with anybody else could have given the impression of a date to somebody who already had a crush.

“That’s the whole problem I think”, Nica concluded our fourth round of gossiping about everything that led up to the fireworks.

“For him all the little things seemed like flirting or hints or whatever because he hoped they were, because he wanted them to be exactly that. Only because he already was in love. To Jette, and us – I know I’ve joked about you two getting married forever, but I never believed it – it was just the usual banter.”

“Exactly. I would have gone to that party alone with him, had you been on holiday, and neither me nor him would have even considered it to be a date. We’d have laughed at the idea.”

“Thank you!”

“When did you tell him you loved him?”, Blair wondered aloud. “That is so … important. I can’t imagine that he’d make that up.”

“It took me three days to come up with a theory”, I answered. “First I thought he had just gone crazy, but then I remembered.”

“So, you actually did say it?”, Felix eyes widened.

“What I said, was: We love you. It was on a Friday afternoon when all of you had that stupid astrology course and Crick and I were both free. I got grumpy about us spending so much time with the Potter-posse and didn’t seem very happy that Milla ad I had written letters to Remus”

“I doubt he minded I wrote Remus.”

“Whatever. I told him that we didn’t abandon him and that we cared for him and that we loved him. Or something like that.”

“If he wanted to take everything as a hint…”

“Still farfetched”, found Chloe.

“It’s the only explanation I got. Other than he’s lost his marbles.”

“Benefit of the doubt, then.”

We didn’t go for a fifth round and just left it at that. But we weren’t done. Oh, no, we were not done.

“The fact that he punched Black, though. So out of character. And wherever Black got him it either healed really quickly or it’s well hidden.”

“He didn’t hit back”, I disturbed Chloe’s train of thought. “He hasn’t told me what exactly happened when they were alone but he – and Jonas – told me that he didn’t hit back. Just took it.”

“Are you kidding me? Black is the first one I’d thought would punch his lights out. He always acts so tough and cool”, Blair yelled.

“Not kidding.”

“I bet Remus knows what happened. Milla ask him tomorrow, yeah?” We went on forever.

When I woke up the next morning I still wore my robes and Felix lay next to me.

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james potter #james & peter & remus & sirius #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #original character

0 notes

liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

Text

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Eight: New Year New Me I

When I woke up the next morning I was absolutely disoriented. The room I found myself in was white and royal blue and completely foreign to me. I wore a red shirt I had never seen before that was at least three sizes too big and smelled of chocolate and coffee and there was a very annoying ticking noise that had woken me up.

I sat up and the big bed with the absurdly fluffy and comfortable sheets and took in the room again. Right, I was at the Potters. As I curiously looked at the expensive white furniture and the blue satin on the chair, floor and curtains I found the source of the ticking. It was a cute little owl pecking its beak against the window. With a moan and a yawn I got out of bed and opened the window.

“Morning”, I mumbled while untying the envelope from the owl’s leg. I couldn’t find any crackers or other snacks for the poor thing, so I massaged her neck while reading the note. It was from my mum. She, too had been woken up by the bird and wrote that that was for my sake. Had she found my bed empty before hearing the Potters had taken me in for the night all hell would have broken lose. She was happy I was alright, wondered why I hadn’t gone home with Crick – Crap! My sleepy mind had not yet thought back to that disaster that would probably haunt me through the first months of this new year and my heart instantly sunk to my stomach – and asked me to write her when I wanted to be picked up. Dad would get me. Straight forward enough.

On the carefully carved nightstand I found an antique alarm clock that told me it was nearly half past eleven. I hoped I wasn’t the last to get up and downstairs to the kitchen. That would be embarrassing. I jumped into my jeans, decided to keep Remus’ t-shirt on for now as it was more comfortable and warmer than my own and snuck over to the bathroom.

I brushed my teeth, washed my face and untangled my birdsnest of hair with a brush I found in one of the drawers. With only six hours of sleep I didn’t have the energy to put it into either a bun or even a ponytail and I just let it hang down to hips.

Back in my room I called the owl to my arm and took it down with me. In the foyer that I already knew I heard noises that sounded like utensils on plates and I smelled coffee. It seemed I was the last one to get up and everybody already was having breakfast. Bothersome. I didn’t want to be the uninvited houseguest and the idiot to delay the start of the year.

Nonetheless I followed the sounds down a corridor I hadn’t seen last night and found myself in front of a white door with four round milky windows through which I could make out at least two figures. I knocked before I entered.

Turned out I wasn’t the last one to wake up. I was the first one. At least of the students in the house. Upon my knocking both figures had turned their heads to the door and welcomed me with confused and concerned looks.

The owl flew over to the tall man with the mane of grey hair. Absentmindedly he fed her some crackers from a jar next to him.

“Ehm… Good morning. And happy new year.”

“Good morning”, the man, who I assumed to be Mr Potter said, still very stern looking.

“Happy new year, dear”, the short woman with all the laugh-wrinkles said warmly and reassuringly prompting me to explain why I was in their house and had their owl with me.

“I’m sorry for intruding. My name’s Jette de Witt, my parents live over in Marlowe’s Creek. I met your son and his friends last night at the Raven and … well, I was supposed to go home with a friend of mine but that didn’t quite worked out and so P… James was kind enough to offer me to floo home through your fire place but we couldn’t find any floo powder and then he insisted I stayed, which I did.” I breathed in. “I wrote my parents last night not to worry, that’s why she was with me”, I gestured at the owl.

“To be honest I had hoped P… James had either left you a note or was already awake. I’m quite uncomfortable barging in here like this…” I bit my lip and looked to the floor.

“Oh, dear, no need to feel flustered. Come, come. Sit down. Would you like a tea or some hot milk?”

“Coffee would be wonderful, thank you Mrs Potter.”

“Euphemia, please. And that’s Fleamont.” She smiled another of her ‘you-are-welcome-here-make-yourself-at-home’-smiles and her husband nodded his head with a grin that looked a lot like his son’s.

“Jette”, I said again before I took a sip of the coffee Mrs Potter had put down in front of me.

“Merlin, that’s good. Thank you.”

“Did you say your last name was de Witt?”, Mr Potter asked over the edge of his Daily Prophet. The headline was another disappearance of a muggleborn ministry witch.

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Fleamont”, Mr Potter corrected me with smile.

“You’re friends with James, right? He talked about you. They all did.”

“Oh, right”, Mrs Potter remembered, “You went to the Market together.”

“Yes, we ran into each other there and spent the evening together.”

“Then you must know that other girl they weren’t shutting up about, Fleamont, help me out!”

“Melanie? No. Melina? Not either…”

“Milla?”, I suggested.

“That’s it. There’s been lot of talk about her, since Remus and Peter arrived. So, you do know her?”

“She’s one of my best friends. Remus has a bit of a weakness for her. And she for him.”

“A bit? He is absolutely enchanted by her. Not that he would ever admit that”, Mrs Potter chirped rolling her eyes. “Teenagers!”

I laughed and took another sip of my coffee. The kitchen was mainly white, just like the rest of the house and very cosy just like the rest of the house. I had sat down at a little bar next to the free standing stove, Mr Potter sat at around white table with white chairs that had red white patterned cushions on them. The entire kitchens was red and white and looked like a giant picnic basket. It was very homy.

“Did you say your parents know where you are?”, Mrs Potter asked suddenly looking up from the stove on which she made pancakes together with a houseelf.

“I did.”

“I hope they won’t get you before breakfast.”

“They asked me to tell them when to pick me up. I haven’t yet. And I don’t want to bother you anymore, Mrs Potter – “

“Euphemia!”

“I don’t want to bother you anymore, Euphemia, I’ve already invited myself to stay the night and steal your coffee.”

“Don’t be such a polite goodie-two-shoes”, James yawned from the door walking in in his pyjamas followed by Black.

“I invited you to stay the night and she would force that coffee down your throat if you deny it. Morning mummy.” He kissed his mother on the cheek and did the same to his dad who frowned at the state of his son’s hair. To my surprise Black followed Potter hugging Mrs Potter first – “Euphemia, looking delicious as ever”- and then Mr Potter – “Morning Fleamont”, before plummeting down next to me and taking my coffee.

“Sirius, where are your manners! Is that a busted lip!?!” Mrs Potter’s voice flew several octaves higher with that last question.

“Firstly, she won’t mind me drinking her coffee. She’s nice. Secondly, this is not a busted lip, it is souvenir of my chivalry. So, please, don’t worry, Phemia.”

“Chivalry?”, Mr Potter asked from where he sat with Potter.

Black was just about to tell the story of how he and his friends rescued me from that disastrous midnight-kiss, when Remus and Pettigrew walked in, waving at everybody wishing us a universal good morning.

Remus took the free stool next to me, while Pettigrew trotted over to the Potter men. Mrs Potter provided Remus and me with new coffee mugs, shooting a look at Black as she did so, and brought some milky earl-grey over to the other boys.

“Lyndi and I were thinking pancakes and waffles to welcome the new year. Anybody against that?”

“Mrs… Euphemia, really I could just write my parents to pick me up right away…”

“Nonesense! You write your parents to come get you around”, she checked the clock on the wall “one o’clock or half past. Something like that. Gives us time to have a good breakfast and to chat a bit. I reckon you can fill me in on Milla a lot better than this lot”, she vaguely gestured at the boys. “They all seem to think I shouldn’t be interested in her. Which makes me very interested.” I laughed and got up to get the owl and the parchment Mr Potter held up.

“That’s how long your hair is?!”, Pettigrew yelped when I walked past him.

“Yeah.”

“That is a lot of hair, de Witt.”

“Thanks, Pettigrew.”

I wrote back to my mum, telling her that whoever came to get me was cordially invited by the Potters for a cup of coffee and a snack.

Before we could get to gossiping about Milla and Remus who was already blushing like a fwooper in his chair at the table, I disclosed that Dad would probably get me with the car and therefore didn’t need the info that the Potters had no floo powder in the house. A fact that got Mrs Potter all flustered.

“The car? Your father knows how to drive?”, Mr Potter’s eyes widened. For a split second I thought he’d disapprove and tell me to get out of his house but then I saw the child-like expression on his face.

“Do you think he would let me sit in it? Maybe open up the hood? Most muggle things don’t interest me but cars and airplanes are fascinating.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. Doubt he would be able to explain a whole lot to you though, he doesn’t build the things he just drives them. But if you’re really interested I’m sure that Mr Scribe would love to give you the 101 on cars. He’s a mechanic and has his own garage.” Mr Potter’s eyes went blank.

“Mr Scribe is Milla’s dad. He lives in Marlowe’s Creek, too. At the moment they’re all on holiday skiing but once they’re back you should pop in his shop.”

“So, Milla’s dad is a muggle?”, Mrs Potter jumped at the chance to get some more intel on the girl that made Remus blush and to his dismay we talked about her during the entire breakfast. Over the 101st cup of coffee we got to Lily, who Potter loved to discuss and made me praise as if she were a goddess.

I was still in Remus’ shirt when the doorbell rang and my dad was let into the kitchen by Lyndi the houseelf. I could see the confusion in the boys’ face as they looked at my father. He was a good bit taller than me, had dirty blond curly hair, blue eyes and a laissez-faire attitude in life that was always visible. I looked a lot more like my mum than him.

“Morning Dad!”, I flew out of my chair and into his arms. “Happy new year.”

“Morning? That’s rich. Hi, kiddo.”

“Mrs Potter, this is my dad Willem de Witt.”

“Euphemia.”

“Wim.”

“And that’s Mr Potter, Dad.”

“Fleamont.”

“Wim. Pleasure to meet you. And thanks for providing shelter for this one.” He messed up my hair with a stern look.

“Why did you have to search refuge here and disturb the Potters’ morning instead of just going home with Crick, huh?”

“I’d say that’s a story for another time, Sir. My name’s James. And de… Jette is not disturbing us in the slightest”, Potter saved me from answering and I was grateful to no extent. How I would explain what happened last night to my parents, was a mindboggling exercise that I was still too worn out for. . “My father wondered whether you would maybe let him see and sit in your car, if you’re here with it. He’s a bit of a fanatic. Oh, and these are Peter, Remus and Sirius.” Dad shook all their hands.

“All yours”, he asked Mr Potter. But it was Mrs Potter who answered: “Only James.. and Sirius since the summer. You can’t imagine how often I’ve had to tell him to call this place home and not ‘your place’ since he’s moved in.”

The moment she mentioned his name my head twitched at him. Since the summer? Home? Moved in? Black lived with the Potters? The first thing that came to mind was that one of his parents wasn’t well and they couldn’t take care of their children, but then I remembered that Regulus had bragged about how he would go to Malfoy Manor with his parents for Christmas to have a real pure blood feast. So, the Blacks were okay.

Black looked back at me, eyes boring in mine, pure terror on his face.

Regulus was the good son in the eyes of his parents. They thought like he did. Blood purity. Elite. Sirius Black was very outspoken about his views on those subjects. He thought they were rubbish. Ignorant and racist and that every being had the same worth. He was a Gryffindor that stood up for Gryffindor values in a house full of conservative Slytherins.

“Not the first time I get hit by someone.”

I didn’t want to believe it but as soon as the idea formed in my head I knew that it was true. I remembered having seen Black with scratches and black eyes, and healing lips and noses before. Usually on the platform or in the first weeks after break. They abused him. They abused him for being a good person and it had gotten so bad that he had to flee from their house. I felt tears welling up in my eyes, quickly looked down at my mug and then at my dad. Black’s terrified eyes were in my peripheral.

I don’t know how my face looked but it was bad enough to convey to Dad that we should not explore the configuration of the Potter household any further. Remus, Potter and Pettigrew didn’t seem to notice that both, Black and I were absolutely horrified.

“Huh. So, you’re interested in cars, Fleamont? Obviously, I’m no Andrew Scribe but I could tell you what I know and if that’s not satisfying I could leave you Andy’s phone number… Assuming you have a phone.”

“We do. Euphemia’s idea. Brilliant as ever. I would love to take a look at the vehicle.”

“Let’s do it, then. You”, he turned to me, trying to look casual but unable to hide the concern in his eyes, “should probably return that shirt to its rightful owner and get dressed, so we can leave at some point and don’t overstay our welcome.”

“Impossible!”, Potter beamed from the table but I was pretty sure as far as Black was concerned I had overstayed my welcome by roughly two minutes already. His face was now hard as stone and he didn’t look at me at all.

I went upstairs and got dressed. Returning Remus’ shirt by hanging it on the doorknob. I pulled my hair in the typical bun and didn’t dare go back downstairs. Is still hadn’t fully processed what Mrs Potter had said. And what it implied.

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #harry potter #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #remus lupin #sirius black #peter pettigrew #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Seven: New Year's Eve III

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Happy New Year!”

Light and colours and explosions everywhere around me. I turned to hug Crick and wish him a happy new year to then enjoy what had to be the grandest firework extravaganza ever and then everything went wrong.

I turned, Crick’s arm still around me and realised that his face was very close to me. Unnaturally close. He looked into my eyes and kept coming closer, eyes flickering to my. Then he made his move. I dove to the left, away from the arm that was wrapped around my shoulder and threw my chin onto his left shoulder, hugging him. Whatever that was, it was not the kind of joke I liked.

“Happy New Year, Crick!”, I chirped with genuine happiness and excitement, ready to forget whatever weird thing he had just thought up.

When I let him go he had a strange look on his face that I’d never seen before.

“I tried to kiss you there, Jette”, he said after an awkward pause. I stared at him in disbelief. Why would he mention that? It would only make everything stranger than it already was.

“Yeah, I realised that.”

“Why’d you turn away then?” Was he kidding? Why did I dive away? Was that not obvious?

“Because… I’m more of a hugger and not one for platonic kisses?”, I answered hesitatingly. He frowned.

“Neither am I.”

“Huh?” Right above us a huge rocket exploded lighting up the night in gold and blue as it displayed the skyline of Godric’s Hollow nearly to scale. The crowd went wild.

“I said I’m not one for platonic kisses, either”, Crick explained ignoring the wonderful colours and images and coming closer to me once more. This time I didn’t see it coming at all. I was not prepared and I didn’t move. He kissed me. On the lips. One hand on my waist, one on my shoulder, slowly moving up to my neck. I smelled and tasted the mead and fire whiskey he had been drinking. What. The. Hell.

I pushed him away softly. “What the hell?”

“You start the new year with a kiss, it’s tradition”, Crick smirked. Purple and pink hearts rained down from the sky. Wonderful.

“I realise that!”, I huffed, still flustered, out of breath and confused.

“Good. Good. Because I think that that was fairly great. We’ll get even better in time, though.” We were clearly on different pages.

“What? Crick you’ve lost me.” His heavenly smirk turned into confusion, wrinkles of doubt appeared around his mouth and eyes.

“What I mean is, that… that I’d like to kiss you a whole lot more, Libby. Like all the time. And as the only one.”

This was not happening. Nica would have a field day with this.

“Crick…”

“I’m not done. And I might never get the courage again to say so please… You are the most wonderful and pretty girl I’ve ever met, Libby, and you’re clever and funny and… I’ve fallen for you. Pretty hard to be honest.” A gigantic black sparkling raven soared over the pub spewing blood red flames in every direction.

“Crick..”, I started again but he leaned in for the third time as to seal his horrifying confession. I raised my hands to my shoulder, his chest bumped into them.

“What are you doing?”, Crick smiled, trying to push my hands away.

“Crick, I’m sorry but… I… I haven’t. I don’t. Look. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a grade a arsehole, but… I’m not – in love with you. I don’t want to kiss you.” My voice had gotten rather weak at the end of that pathetic speech and I knew that my eyes had grown wide as I looked up to him. I prayed he’d laugh it off and tell me it was just a joke. Whether it really was or not. I just wanted him to pretend none of this had ever happened. A golden castle in the sky behind him. The portal opened a blue and bronze eagle, a red and golden lion, a silver and green snake and a black and yellow badger ran out of them, shooting down to the ground and frolicked through the masses of onlookers.

“Playing hard to get, are we?” Once more Crick got too close to me and once more he crashed into my raised hands.

“I’m not playing!”, the strength had returned to my voice.

“You’re not?”

“I’m not. I’m sorry but I’m not.”

My look was fixed on his face as it morphed from shock into disbelief, from pain into sadness, until it finally landed in anger. The red of the lion reflecting on his skin. This was not good.

“Why would you lead me on then?”

“What?”

“I want to know why you lead me on if you don’t want me”, he shouted. Crick never shouted.

“I didn’t lead you on, Crick. I didn’t even know you liked me like that.”

“Bollocks!” We both jumped at the sound of a cannon ball being fired from a glistening cannon dip-painting the pub and its surroundings in a deep Hawaiian turquoise.

“You told me I should go for whomever I liked whether Jonas and Tristan were for it or not. You said you loved me!” He grabbed me by the shoulders firmly. Tightly. It hurt.

“I was talking about Elaine when I said that Crick”, my voice broke. His eyes looked crazy. What in the world was happening? Another cannon ball was fired. This time neither one of us jumped. I barely realised the beautiful metallic rosegold we were submerged in.

“And I don’t think I said that I loved you.”

“Don’t deny it, Libby! Don’t you dare deny it!” He grabbed me even harder and I flinched at his fingers digging into my shoulders.

An arm wrapped in a black felt coat appeared in front of my face, pushing Crick back a bit, loosening his grip on my arms.

“Mate”, a familiar hoarse voice said calmly.

“Of course you have to turn up. Get lost! This is a private matter!”

“Mate, you’re scaring her”, the hoarse voice answered calm as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. As the sky was lit up by platinum stars two new hand fell on my shoulders and pulled against another body. The hands were light and reassuring. The body tall and slender. I pushed against it just a bit.

“What do you know about how she feels?”, Crick barked.

“I don’t know her as well as you do but I got eyes, Cricket. You’re hurt. I get it. But it’s not her fault. Come on!”

The arm pushed him further away from me and moved to the right, followed by a person in a black felt coat, dark hair to his chin. Crick disappeared, all I saw was the felt back and the dark hair.

Black kept talking to Crick and moved further and further away from me. Potter took his place in front of me watching the two other boys. Someone took my hand.

“You okay, love?”, Pettigrew asked squeezing my hand for a second. A Chinese dragon paraded over the skies, shining in white and magenta.

“No idea”, I admitted. Potter turned around and studied my face.

“Right… listen: Remus and Peter will stay with you”, he looked up at Remus behind me. “Get her to sit down, maybe.” Focussing on me again he continued: “Sirius is trying to calm down Cricket and I’m going to look for his brother. Just in case, okay? You stay with Peter and Remus and have a smoke.” I nodded, still not sure whether all of that just really happened or whether I was victim to a very vivid hallucination.

Remus navigated me to the benches by my shoulders. Pettigrew, still holding my hand, very effectively shooed away the people who sat on the most isolated one and gestured for me to sit. I did.

“How about now? You okay?” His dull blue eyes had something extremely comforting that I hadn’t noticed before. I shook my head, then nodded, then tilted it.

“Did that really happen?”, I asked instead of answering.

Remus sat down next to me, lit a cigarette and put it in my hand. “There. Calm down.” I greedily inhaled the smoke.

“Did that really happen?”, I repeated, eager to be told ‘no’.

“Yes, it did.”

“Merlin!” I let my head fall into my hands.

“I only saw the last part of that whole…thing… but I assume he told you he had a thing for you?”

“Yep”, I didn’t look up.

Pettigrew took my hand again and kneeled down in the snow in front of me. “Did he hurt you? I saw he tried to kiss you…”

“No ,no, not really.” Now I did look up. Both Pettigrew and Remus raised their eyebrows at me.

“I mean, he had quite the grip on my arms, nothing that won’t be gone in day or two. Honestly, I think he’s more hurt than I am.” We fell in silence.

“Did you know, Remus?”, I asked right when I saw Potter hurry toward us with a blond boy following him.

“That he liked you?”

“Huh”

“I thought so, yes.”

“Am I that blind? I wasn’t in the least prepared for that.”

Potter and Jonas were covered in the reflection of bronze flickers when they arrived at our little table, both out of breath. Jonas pulled me up from the bench and into his arms.

“Did he really tell you?” I nodded my head that was still leaning against his chest.

“Idiot! I told him this wouldn’t go well. Look at me!” I did. He critically studied me for a moment.

“I’ll go try to find him and talk some sense into him. You’re okay with these lads, right?”

“Yeah.”

When Jonas had been swallowed up by the crowd that was still gazing at the mesmerising fireworks that I had surely thoroughly enjoyed under different circumstances, I fell back onto the bench between Remus and Pettigrew. Potter leaned against the table.

“So everybody knew, but me?” I looked at Remus.

“None of us really knew, if that helps. Sirius and I had our suspicions.”

“He wasn’t very subtle, come to think of it”, Potter commented. “With the kissing your hair and what not.”

“He’s done that ever since my first year. I was the most pathetic homesick eleven year-old you’ve ever encountered. His mum used to kiss the top of his head when he was sad – I reckon she still does – and so that’s what he did to make me feel better. Nothing I would associate with romantic feelings.” I sighed. Romantic feelings. Crick had romantic feelings for me. Ugh! Things were bound to get complicated.

“Well, there is the whole thing about him hating us”, Pettigrew suggested with a shy smile.

“Yeah, I’m pretty certain he got shit-faced last week because we had decided to crash your little date”, Remus added.

“It wasn’t a date!”, I snapped.

“Right, we know. But he probably didn’t appreciate four chaps demanding your attention.”

“He must have been devastated when his parents grounded him. If this was his plan all along…”, Remus said, making me sigh again.

“What is wrong with him? He’s supposed to be my best friend! Isn’t there some rule in place about not falling for each other?” I looked at them one by one.

“We’re all into girls, I’m afraid. If there is such a rule it’s never come up with us”, Pettigrew joked and actually made me smile.

“Fair enough.”

The entire solar system started spinning above us, getting faster and faster until every planet was swallowed up by the sun that started pulsating switched colours from a yellow-y orange to a silvery white and exploded into all phases of the moon. Remus next to me shivered.

“This is beautiful”, I whispered through chattering teeth.

“Some gentlemen you lot are”, Black half laughed half barked as he peeled himself out his felt coat and put it around my shoulders. My teeth stopped chattering instantly. The jacket was thick and windproof and warm from Black’s body heat.

“Thanks”, I said smiling up to him. “Thanks for everything. All of you”, I added when I realised that I hadn’t thanked them yet for stopping Crick from yelling at me.

“Jonas is taking Cricket home”, Black explained, more for his friends than me.

“He’s still a mess but at least he’s stopped shouting and realises that staying here is a rubbish idea.” He leaned against the pub’s wall and smirked at me. “What on earth have you done to him? He’s positively mental!”

I groaned. If only I knew what I had done to him. Was it my fault? Had I lead him on? Had I made him believe that this kiss was going to start a relationship? How did everybody know what was up, but me?

“I was joking, Goods. It’s not your fault, you’re great. Don’t take it too hard.” He came back toward the bench to pad me on the back, when another group of pink hearts rained down on us and illuminated his face. I didn’t believe it and jumped up.

“Did he punch you?!!!”

Black sported a busted lip that he tried to hide from me by moving back into the shadows of the wall but it was too late.

“He did, didn’t he?” Black didn’t answer.

“Shit, Black, I’m so sorry!” Without even realising it I leaped over to him wrapping my arms around his neck.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. He shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have gotten involved in that. Black, I’m so sorry! I’m…”

“Will you shut up, Goods? It’s fine. Not the first time I get hit by someone. I’ll live. And it adds to my bad boy allure, don’t you think?” He pushed me away and presented his face to me wiggling his eyebrows.

“Maybe. But still. It shouldn’t have happened and it’s all my fault…”

“Bullocks. It’s his fault”, Remus said. He, too, had gotten up from the bench, offered me and Black a cigarette each and suggested to head back inside soon.

“Otherwise one of you will die”, I pointed to Black, then to me. Black let me go to take the fag and I felt a little better when he smirked at a girl that walked past and seemed fascinated by the blood on his shirt. Great, I ruined his shirt, too.

“I told Jonas we’d make sure that you get home, by the way”, Black said when we walked back into the party. I wasn’t sure whether I was still in the mood for it but I definitely didn’t want to walk home by myself or run into Crick.

“You can floo over from ours… Potter’s.”

“Thinking of everything. Thank you.”

I got a round of fire whiskey and Master’s Brew for my heroes and stood at the bar with them for a while.

“Pete, I think she’s not all that shaken up anymore. She wouldn’t wanna keep you from your sweetheart."

"Hang on!! Sweetheart? Do tell!” I smiled the first genuine smile in an hour as I turned my attention to Pettigrew.

He hesitated at first but then quickly told me that he had met a American girl at the beginning of the night who apparently thought he was “cute as a button” and had occupied him and his lips for most of the night. She’d actually been with the group when they spotted Crick and me and Pettigrew had left her with a fast explanation.

“I reckon she’s got another one by now. Or thinks I tried to get rid of her”, he said looking into his cocktail. “Besides, can’t rescue a damsel in distress and then abandon her, can I?”

“Yes, yes you can!”, I protested, taking his hand. I’d be damned if I ruined another friend’s night. By my count I had already messed New Year’s up for Crick, Jonas – therefore probably Valerie – and Black. I was not adding Pettigrew to that list.

“Lead the way, I’ll apologise for stealing you away and explain that you saved me. If she doesn’t want to talk to you the, we can both slap her.” Pettigrew giggled and pointed to the next bar over at a back with lengthy golden locks and an exquisite bum.

“Nice, Pettigrew”, I praised his conquest. He blushed.

“Her name’s Margery”, Pettigrew whispered just before we reached her.

“Hey Margery?”

“Yeah?” She looked at me without any friendly expression and got annoyed when she spotted Pettigrew beside me.

“Hi, I’m Jette. I think I may have stolen Peter here away from you. Sorry ‘bout that. But some bloke decided he could just kiss me whether I liked it or not and Peter rescued me from him. He and his friends just made sure that I wasn’t hurt or shaken up…

I thought I’d tell you that I didn’t mean to keep him for myself. I mean he is quite the catch, but I don’t stand a chance. He felt bad about it, though. So, thanks for letting him save and sorry for taking so long…”, I cut myself off not knowing what else there was to say but Margery only half listened to me staring at Peter with pure admiration.

“You saved her from some perv?”, she asked and I reckoned my job was done. I slipped away as she made him tell him everything in detail and I hoped for his sake that he’d exaggerate a bit.

Back with the other three I started to relax more and more, forced myself to forget about Crick for the time being and danced to the second coming of Baba Yaga, one more trying to outdo Remus in his goofy dance moves.

We stayed until four in the morning, which was about the time my feet were absolutely done with the high heeled boots I wore, Margery had been forced to go home by her British cousin and Remus had had exactly one beer too many to keep from giggling constantly. It was amazing. At long last I found my jacket and followed Potter and Black out the pub and down a road into Godric’s Hollow.

It was a brisk ten minute walk to the Potter house, that might have been called a mansion. We walked through the iron garden gate and towards a friendly looking white door. Potter pulled out the key and opened it letting us all go in before him. From the inside the house seemed even bigger. If it hadn’t been for all the cosy pillows and rugs, lived chaos on the chairs and coatracks and the many goofy photographs I would have thought that Mr and Mrs Potter weren’t all that different from the Mulcibers or Flints. But those little details showed that here lived a loving family, proud of their only son, happy to be together.

Potter lead me into the spacious white and scarlet living room in the centre of which stood a huge white fireplace with a beautiful antique mantle which was overflowing with pictures of Potter from his birth to now. The very last one in the row showed Potter, Black, Pettigrew and Remus all wearing Santa Clause hats waving at the camera drinking hot chocolate. I smiled. I liked this place.

“Damn!”, Potter whispered as he turned a white vase on its head. “Empty. Mum didn’t buy any yesterday. She’s getting older every minute, I swear. Suppose I could wake her to apparate you over.”

“Oh, god, no! Don’t wake her. I don’t want to bother any more people. Uhm… If you don’t mind I could just sleep on the couch. I might need to borrow an owl to let my parents know that I’m still alive and that they could fetch me tomorrow. And if that’s not okay, I’ll just walk myself home. My parents are too scared anyways. Nothing will happen. Yeah, I’m just gonna…” It turned around to leave when Potter held me back.

“Yeah, no. You’re not walking yourself home and I’m knackered. We told Cricket that we’d get you home and we will. Tomorrow. Mum and Dad won’t mind and there’s enough owls to let you folks know. And there’s another guestroom so you won’t even have to share a space with us gross baboons.” I hesitated, he smiled. “I insist, de Witt.”

“Okay, thanks. Getting to bed does sound significantly better than walking through the snow for fortyfive minutes.”

“Follow me, Miss. Oh, and would you mind taking off you shoes? Mum will go crazy otherwise.” I didn’t mind and followed the boys up the stairs to the first floor that was a giant hall with more white doors.

“That’s the bathroom” Potter pointed at the door at the right from the staircase. My room’s right next to it, Sirius’ opposite of mine.” He pointed at the respective doors. “Remus is in that one”. He pointed at the door to the left of the staircase, “and Peter’s next to me. So you, could move in next to Sirius. I’m sure it’s been made up last week together with the other rooms because mum didn’t know which rooms the boys would favour.” I nodded.

“This place is amazing”, I uttered as I followed Potter over the thick, cosy, grey rug to my door. He opened it and let met in. Then he looked at my jeans and t-shirt combo with furrowed brows.

“Remus”, he hissed. “You got a shirt for de Witt to sleep in? I doubt the jeans and that shred of a top are comfortable to wear to bed.”

Remus was going to protest in one way or another but Potter was quicker: “I’d give her one of mine but you’re taller and she’d be decent all night long.” He winked at me and Remus disappeared into his room without a word. He came back just moments later handing me a scarlet red shirt with a gold embroidered lion and two beater’s bats on it.

“Hope you don’t mind”, he grinned.

“Absolutely not. You guys are too good to be true. Honest. Thanks.” He gently punched my shoulder and wished me a good night. Potter got a beautiful little pygmy owl and some parchment.

“Just let her out via your window.” He again told me where everything was and pulled a new toothbrush out of the nightstand in ‘my’ room, then he wished me a good night as well. Pettigrew had already disappeared and Black came out the bathroom as I went in.

“In the sharp light of the hallway his lip looked a bit worse than I originally thought. I unintentionally bit my own.

“Told you I’ll live, Goods.”

“Right.”

“I’m sure he’ll owl tomorrow saying he’s sorry. Just got carried away when I told him you didn’t want him. Can’t be nice to hear. But he’ll calm down and get over you and be your best friend again. Don’t worry.”

“People don’t give you enough credit, Black.”

“I know, tragically underrated.” He smirked. “Night, Goods.”

“Good night, Black. And Happy New Year.”

“Right. Happy New Year.”

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #james & peter & remus & sirius #harry potter #james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #original character

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

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How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Seven: New Year's Eve II

I slept in the next morning and called the Crickets right after breakfast. Mrs Cricket told me that Crick had lost his phone privileges and that he was also grounded. That did not sound good for our plans. I kindly asked if she knew whether she and her husband would still be mad at New Year’s Eve, and through a chuckle she said that they didn’t know yet. She did tell me that I didn’t need to worry too much, but she couldn’t make any promises.

I relayed that information to Potter in a quick note, in which I also told him and the other boys that most of my plans had been cancelled but his answer that came only fifteen minutes later only told me to keep him up to date. No mention of any kind of invitation to join them in their shenanigans. Something about his note was off, I thought. It was funny and polite but it seemed to … correct. I wondered if I had offended him by getting involved in his argument the other night. Milla, whose owl arrived that afternoon, would’ve probably known whether I had stepped on his toes but I didn’t want to burden her with my petty problems while she was on “the best holiday ever”. Instead I asked her what she had gotten Remus for Christmas.

That evening I mostly spent on the couch with my parents and Felix.

The next three days were rather uneventful. After deciding that the dress I had worn to Slughorn’s Christmas party and on Christmas Eve at my grandparents would probably get ruined at a noisy and messy pub I had organised some jeans, a skirt and several t-shirts and jackets on my bed to figure out my outfit for New Year’s. As I couldn’t decide at all those clothes just travelled from my bed to my little armchair and back every day.

We fell into the routine of having breakfast together, playing board games – Felix won every single one of them – and watching a lot of TV. As much as I loved my family, I’d had better Christmas breaks. Milla’s letters informed me about the fact that none of the boys she’d met in Austria came even close to Remus and that she had gotten him all kinds of chocolate, a snow globe and a warm, woolly cardigan in his favourite colour.

She wasn’t sure whether he’d be offended at that because most of his clothes were fairly old and distressed. I wrote back saying that a cardigan was a cardigan and his favourite colour was a good choice. Besides, I thought but didn’t put down on paper, he had blushed at the mention of her gift and smiled. I reckoned he was rather touched by her spending some money on something he liked and needed rather than just getting him the goofy snow globe. It was high time those two had a heart to heart and got their feelings out there. They’d be a great couple.

I told myself that the boys had planned this holiday as an elongated boys’ night and didn’t that I’d only be in the way if they had invited me. Especially, if they planned any more “normal Tuesdays’.

The morning of the 31st I moved my clothes back onto the back, stared at them for a bit, was uninspired and decided that it wasn’t too early to call Crick and ask if he was going to the party with me.

“Cricket”

“Jonas?”

“The very same. That you, Jette?

“ Indeed it is. I was wondering whether your brother got his phone privileges back.”

“Guess, you don’t mean Tristan?” He laughed.

“I was thinking of Crick.”

“Well, he’s out with Dad and I don’t know when he’ll be back. But I would be willing to take a message.”

“Oh, would you just have him call me back? My parents only agreed to let me go to that party because he was going to walk me there and back. If he doesn’t get to go I need to come up with a plan B.”

“I see. Mum?...Mum!...”It’s Jette on the phone. She wants to know whether Nate goes to the Raven tonight…He’s supposed to walk her home…Right, mum. She’s fifteen…uhu…hmh…thanks!

Mum says she and Dad talked about it and they’ll let him go but he doesn’t know yet. He’ll probably call you this afternoon and you’re supposed to act very delighted. But there’s no need for a plan B.”

“Tell your parents, they’re the best, yeah? And thanks for getting that done for me.”

“Anytime. See you tonight, then?”

“Tonight. Bye.

“Bye.”

I hung up the phone and skipped back to my room to write to Godric’s Hollow. It was a quick, barely legible letter in which I mainly stated that I didn’t need to make use of Potter’s kind offer. I could have told them a whole lot more and asked when exactly they planned to show up at the pub but since they hadn’t reached out to me, I didn’t really feel like it.

Crick called somewhere around four in the afternoon and told me he was allowed to go to the Raven. As instructed I reacted with delight and we made plans. I would walk over to Crick’s around nine o’clock and then we’d take the pathway to the pub. The Crickets lived at the very edge of Marlowe’s Creek, closest to Godric’s Hollow, but the walk would still take us at least half an hour. We had briefly thought about going earlier but we both figured there was no reason to arrive hours before midnight.

After everything was organised I ran back into my room and chugged the skirt back into its drawer. Thirty minutes – or more – in a snowy December night was not calling for skirts and tights. The rest of my legwear options were all very similar: Jeans in various shades of black and grey. In the end I opted for black and decided to wear my new charcoal grey “The Who’- shirt that one of my cousins had given me for Christmas. I would pretend to be cool, rather than pretty tonight. I put the rest of the clothes back in the various drawers and cupboards and waited for it to be time to go to my first real New Year’s Eve party.

It took forever until mum called us for dinner. In honour of dad’s Dutch family she usually made appleflap for a midnight snack. It was one of the best variations on donuts anybody had ever thought of. Baked apples and donuts and powdered sugar. Since I wasn’t going to be home to wish them all a happy new year and munch down on way too many appleflaps she had decided to fry them in advance and serve them as dessert which I was chuffed about. After we were done eating and chatting and eating some more I got dressed, packed my back and spent quite some time in the bathroom to deal with my hair and face.

I looked at myself in the mirror. Usually I never wore my hair down. It was always crafted into a fairly impressive bun on the top of my head to not be in the way. Now, that I looked at my hip-long dark brown locks, all brushed and shiny I thought that it would add a little umph to me if I had hair to swing around. A high ponytail it was.

And to that I added my usual make-up of mascara and dark lipstick, though I went for a dark maroonish red instead of brown. The result made me rather proud. I looked old enough to go out on New Year’s Eve. I looked cool.

“Don’t you dare go home without Nate, you hear me. I know that you’re responsible enough to not get in trouble but I don’t trust any drunken teenagers or twenty-somethings”, mum said for the third time.

“Why would I go home without him. It’s a pretty boring walk.”

“She’s just worried, cause you’re growing up. Cut her some slag, kid”, dad chuckled, while hugging me. “You look very nice. Don’t drive those boys too crazy, huh.” We both laughed, while Felix rolled his eyes and mum got flustered.

“Don’t give her ideas, Wim!”

“She’s allowed to have fun, right? Calm down, honey, all will be well.” He kissed her on the top of her head and pulled her to his side. I hugged Felix one last time and promised I’d made sure to wish everybody a happy new year from him, waved at my parents and quickly ran out the door, just in case mum changed her mind last minute.

Generally, it took about ten to fifteen minutes to get to Crick’s house and generally, it didn’t bother me but the wind was fairly icy and the coat I had chosen to wear was not necessarily made for winter. But it looked great. When I finally rang the doorbell at the Crickets’ I was already shaking.

Mrs Cricket opened and gave me on of her hyper-happy smiles before pulling me into a hug and the house, leading me into the livingroom.

“Run! She’s gone absolutely mental!”, Crick yelled before we had even entered the room and tried to pull me right back to the door.

“No way to speak to your mother, young man. Not after she was generous enough to let you go to a party with alcohol after what you did last time you saw beer.”

“Can’t we at least agree that you overreact a little?”, Crick asked with a pained reaction. On the couch to our right I saw Tristan, Alanna and Jonas laughing behind their hands, trying hard not to make any sounds. I tried to silently ask them what was going on, but they all just shook their heads.

“Now, I’m sure Jette won’t mind me taking a few pictures. To commemorate your first big party.”

“Uhhmm… okay?” This I had not expected.

“Why would we need to commemorate this?” The couch erupted in laughter.

“Oh shut up, you!”, Mrs Cricket chuckled and went to fetch her camera.

“Ugh!”, moaned Crick and sank into a chair. “This has been going on all day. She’s gone mental, I tell you.” I took off my jacket and sat down.

“Why are you so happy?”

“Because this has been going on all day. Since you called this morning to ask whether you should go with someone else mum’s been all flustered”, Tristan explained.

“I think she’s rather proud that your parents trust Nate this much. And maybe she has a slight case of empty-nest-syndrome. None of us had to take pictures when we first spent New Year’s somewhere else”, Jonas chipped in.

“She’s so cute!”, giggled Alanna.

“It’s not cute, Al. It’s annoying and frustrating and takes up a lot of time”, Crick hissed when his mother returned.

“There we are, lovelies. Won’t take long. Now, how about one picture of you alone, Nate, and one of Jette alone and one of you together and one with Jonas. He’s going, too, after all.”

“Why do you need four pictures of us not doing anything?”, Crick whined, while the sofa had gone back to stifling laughter.

“Don’t be a spoilsport! The longer you argue, the longer you’ll stay here…”

“Ugh, fine!” Crick got up and stood in front of the decorated window, not looking happy.

“Come on, smile!”

“Mum!”

“Smile for me, Nathan.” Crick pulled his face into a weird grimace and his mother snapped a shot. Then, she waved me and Jonas to join Crick, she took another picture and in the end she took one of me alone, in which I was very uncomfortable and understood Crick’s irritation. This was not necessary and pretty strange.

“See, that wasn’t so bad. Now come here, I’ll give you a warming charm.”

“Brilliant idea, Mrs Cricket. Thank you!”, I cheered while she waved her wand over me. We both put on our jackets, wished the giggling sofa and a grinning Mr Cricket a happy new year and left.

“I’m sorry, Libby, I don’t know what got into her”, Crick started as soon as we had reached the street.

“No big deal.”

“Still…I’ve already made an arse out of myself once this week I didn’t need another round of humiliation.”

“You’re mum is the sweetest. No need to be humiliated.”

“Tristan said your night was pretty eventful after I left.”

“Well, yeah, Potter got into it with a troll of a muggle. Thought they’d throw punches but he managed to talk the idiot down.”

“Did he seriously snog some 21-year old?”

“I didn’t ask her how old she was. But yeah.” He nodded and trotted in silence.

“Did they make a lot of fun of me?”, Crick asked after a few minutes.

“Fun of you?”

“For getting pissed to the point of no return before eight.”

“No. They didn’t make fun of you.”

“Please! It’s their job to badmouth others!”

“I will never understand why you can’t stand them. Potter said he had expected you to last longer and that it was a weak outing. The others agreed. That was it. Nobody laughed at you, nobody made fun of you.”

“Weak outing, huh. D’you think that, too?”

“No… I was just confused by it. And worried. Didn’t seem like you.”

“Worried? You were worried about me?”

“Yes, I was. When Tristan came back and said he’d take you home, I figured you felt pretty miserable. And you’re parents would be fairly mad, So, I worried.”

“Hmmhmm”

The question why he had gotten so sloshed burnt on the tip of my tongue but I didn’t know how to ask it.

“Jonas said you were drowning your sorrows that night.” No reaction he just looked at the snow covered path that led us through a field. A little to our right was the forest, right to our left the creek.

“I didn’t know you were unhappy. You okay? Anything I can do?” He smiled.

“No, everything’s fine. I was just…the group was…and…” He stopped, took a moment and started again. “I might have been thinking that the Market was our thing. You, me, Tristan, Jonas and Milla. We didn’t even let Felix come. But Alanna got herself invited and then there was dancing and then Potter, Black, Lupin and Pettigrew tagged along.”

“So, what?”

“It’s our thing, Jette! Without us going to the market it’s not really Christmas.”

“I know! But it doesn’t have to be exactly the same every year, does it? I mean Alanna and Tristan seem serious and very slowly approach appropriate wedding-age. She might end up a part of your family, why not have her join in on the traditions. And the dancing is just as much an addition as the beer tent or the rum-spritzed hot chocolate. If nothing ever changed or evolved we’d end up at the merry-go-round every year.” I smiled at him.

“To be honest I’d love it if in like twenty years we’d still do this after the holidays. Each of us with the husbands and wives, children of our own… You can’t expect it to be the same forever.”

“I’m not expecting it to be the same forever. And I’m fine with wives and husbands joining in.”

“But?”

“But Potter and his friends are not wives and husbands.”

“You’re not seriously telling me that you drank yourself off your trolley because those blokes were there?”

“I didn’t plan to throw up!”

“I know”, I whispered. Shouldn’t have brought it up.

“Point is, I made an arse out myself over nothing, and I’m not feeling too good about it. And it didn’t help that I imagined all of you pissing yourselves laughing over how dumb I’ve been.”

“We didn’t do that.”

“Thanks.” He put his arm around my shoulder and kissed the top of my head like he always did. “Now, let’s talk about something more fun.”

“Have you heard any further details on Jonas’ little vamp from that night?” I looked up at him in pure excitement.

“You mean Valerie?”

“I don’t know, do I?”

“Think you do.”

Apparently, Valerie was a Ravenclaw whose grandparents lived in Godric’s Hollow and who had had an eye on Jonas for a while. She stayed with her grandparents for the entire holidays and was friends with a friend of a friend’s of Jonas’ which meant that they would run into each other at the preparty that they both went to.

I asked whether Crick thought that it would get serious between the two of them but he shook his head. In his mind Jonas was still very much under Elaine’s spell.

“He’s talked about her over the holidays. Tried to make it sound casual but it wasn’t. She’s really done it to him.”

We tried to think up an elaborate scheme to get Jonas and Elaine together and were pretty surprised when we found ourselves in front of Morgana’s Raven.

The music was pumping through the air, vibrating the ground and entering my body. Some people stood in the shadows smoking and drinking all kinds of potion looking drinks. We looked at each other and Crick gave me a knowing grin.

“Have at it then. One quick cigarette.”

“That’s why you’re the best!”, I grinned back at him and found a spot under the little pavilion next to the entrance. I lit my smoke and looked around. I had only ever seen the Raven when it was closed during the day, this was the first time I got to actually experience it. And an experience it was.

The building itself had probably been built in the 1800s, white with brown beams and the big sign over the double door reading Morgana’s Raven in black gothic letters, two ravens at both sides. There were statues and images of ravens all over the little front garden that also had three tables with benches around them and a bar table. I spotted some giant kibbles next to the doors and figured that they had flowers or other plants in them during the spring and summer months.

The tables, benches, pavilion and doors were all black as the night and gave the whole building – despite the white walls – a spooky and haunted vibe. I loved it. The fact that it was an all magical pub and invisible to muggles only made it all more important, cool and exclusive.

Crick watched me watch the place and laughing people with a vague smile.

“You look amazing by the way. Love your hair like that”, he said in a soft voice when I was done taking in all the impressions. I felt myself blushing. I never blushed.

“Thanks…” I looked him up and down. He had cut his hair again and wore a black dress shirt with blue jeans under his winter coat.

“You look quite dapper yourself, if I may say so”, I regained my emotional balance, smiling up at him.

“I hoped you’d be impressed.”

“And impressed I am. Wanna go in?”

“Yeah, let’s do i…”

“Oi, Goods! Mind if we join?” A group of four approached us, cigarettes in hand.

Remus was the first to pull me into a short hug, then the rest followed.

“Cricket!”, Remus shook Crick’s hand.

“Glad to hear you got to come. My parents would have grounded me for ages… How bad was it?”, Pettigrew said while shaking Crick’s hand. Crick didn’t seem all too happy to see them but was surprised by their genuine approach.

“I was grounded all week. No phone. No TV. No fun. Mum told me this morning that I could go.”

“So, de Witt said”, Potter answered. “Wait, no fun? I thought de Witt was supposed to hang out with you every day.”

“That was the plan. But I kind or ruined that by getting smashed…”

“So, what have you been doing the past couple of days” Black looked at me.

“Oh you know, enjoyed the time with my family, tidied my room, organised Christmas presents…”

“Why didn’t you tell us you had nobody to go to? Could’ve come over to ours”, Potter asked with the most confused face I had ever seen on him.

“Euhm… I thought you were mad at me for interfering in you fight… Dunno…Didn’t want to make you any angrier…”

„Mad at you?“

„You got involved in a fight?!“ Crick stared at me in utter shock.

“No”, Black answered for me “James here got into a fight and Goods defended him.”

We quickly told Crick the whole story about the giant man and his cheating girlfriend.

“Thanks, man”, Crick said, one hand on Potter’s shoulder.

“Come again?”

“For making sure she didn’t get herself in any trouble. I appreciate it.”

“Sure.” Potter turned to me. “Why on earth did you think I’d be angry?”

“Just.. your letter seemed so… polite. I didn’t trust it…”

“And you hate pissing people of which means that you always assume you do”, Crick added. All the boys chuckled for a second.

“Look we’ve crashed your traditions last time already”, Black said throwing his fag to the ground and stepping on it. “Won’t do that again. Find us at midnight, yeah?” He waved his friends to follow him and they all went inside.

“See, there not at all bad.”

“Guess so. They didn’t invite themselves to tag along all night. And anybody who keeps you from getting slapped is a good person in my book.”

“You do realise I can look after myself?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

He pulled me by the hood of my coat and led me to the double doors to finally get to the party we had both been looking forward to for weeks.

The inside of the raven was even better than the outside. The whole place was covered in knee high fog that I suspected was conjured with the help of a well-executed sculptile charm. For all I could tell the floor was made of black marble, there were no windows, they had real crows and ravens flying all over the place in the high ceiling that was completely covered in black satin. The walls displayed different paintings and renderings of Morgana, Merlin, Avalon and Excalibur, the first goblin sword that was ever kept by wizards and – if I remembered correctly – one of the reasons for the goblin riots.

The room was gigantic and hexagon shaped, a bar at every other wall. Directly opposite the double door we had just come through a silver podium had been erected on which a band played live music. I had to do a double take but it really was Baba Yaga. One of the hottest new wizarding bands of this year.

Crick and I both squealed at the idea that we would see them live before we remembered that we were very cool teenagers that went to concerts of popular bands all the time.

“Tickets!” A woman roughly the age of my parents stood next to the door and held out her hand. We put our tickets in it, she took out her wand and mumbled something, then a silver raven appeared on both our left wrists.

“Have fun!” The woman smiled a lot wider and warmer than I had expected and pushed us into the room, to let the next group of people in.

Despite the 100 or 200 people in the room it wasn’t hot, but warm enough to want out of the jackets. We through them in the pile on one of the window sills and let the crowd sent us to one of the bars.

“Fancy anything in particular”, Crick yelled in my ear over the music. I studied the menu that was written out in silver chalk on a huge blackboard. They had the typical wizarding drinks like Fire Whiskey, Giggle Water and Butterbeer. But I also spotted my mum’s favourite drink: Daisy draught and several kinds of mead that were all listed above an array of cocktails I had never heard of before.

“Think I’ll have the Daisy Draught”, I finally said.

“Like mother like daughter”, Crick laughed and ordered the draught for me and a Raven Mead for himself. I was going through my handbag to get the 15 sickles I owed him but he wouldn’t take them.

“My treat”, he said. “Cause I left you alone all this time.”

Drink in hand we fought our way through the crowd and to the stage where Baba Yaga now performed their number one hit Soul Eater and we went absolutely crazy.

Jonas and his friends – among which vamp Valerie – arrived roughly an hour after us, positively inebriated and up for a good time. Jonas instantly found us and forced us to follow him to the bar where he treated us to shots of Gigglewater and a Glass of Master’s Brew each. It tasted like a holiday in Tahiti and I decided to never have more than one of those. The alcohol was not detectable although the menu informed me that there was rum, firewhiskey, gillywater and gold leave brandy in it. This was one of those drinks that my dad referred to as dangerously unsuspicious and headache inducing. But it was so good.

Jonas introduced us to his friends, some of which I knew from my own common room or the great hall and some of which I had never seen before. Valerie was the sweetest girl I had ever met which absolutely clashed with her mysterious ‘come-hither’- appearance. She was just a year older than me and told me how jealous she was that I got to spend my time with so many gorgeous boys.

“First you grow up with all the Cricket boys and get to be the apple of their eye – from all I hear – and then you work your way into that group around Potter. Please, tell me you’ve snogged at least one of them!” I admitted that I hadn’t and hadn’t even thought about it which led Valerie to hit her head against the wooden bar top.

“How is that even possible? Do you have eyes?”

“I do. And they work fine.”

“Are you into girls? I mean those girlfriends of you don’t look too shabby either.”

“Nope, not into girls. I used to have a crush on Crick when I was in second or third year but that’s been over forever.”

“Which one’s Crick?”

“Nathaniel. Nate. You probably have classes with him, right?”

“Right, right… Why don’t you call him Nate?”

I explained to her that Milla had a phase when she was about four or five years old where she would refer to everybody by their last names. She herself had become Scibbyderson, I was Devit and Crick became Crick. Why only his botched last name stuck as a nickname I didn’t know but it was how he’d gotten it.

Valerie leaned in even closer and yanked my ear to her mouth. “You know Jonas well, yeah?”

“I guess…”

“You think I have a chance with him?”

“Didn’t you already take him home? I’d say that constitutes…

“”I mean in the long run”, she interrupted me. I bit my lip.

“Honestly, that’s not the kind of stuff I talk to him about. I reckon Crick might know, but it’s most likely that Jonas takes Tristan as his confidant. Sorry.”

“It’s just that I think he doesn’t fancy me. He doesn’t seem interested in me.”

As if he’d heard us talk about him Jonas threw one arm around each of us.

“Ladies! Time to dance dance dance! Let’s not waste the last fifteen minutes of this year standing at a bar sipping stale drinks and talking about nail polish” we both shot very disapproving looks at him “let’s spend it laughing and twirling and shouting and celebrating.”

He dragged us into the middle of the dance floor where we also found Crick and the rest of Jonas’ group who all instantly welcomed us in their little circle. Given that I had never talked to any of these people aside form Jonas and Crick I felt surprisingly at home. Older students didn’t necessarily give younger ones the time of day, so I their welcoming manner was baffling at first, but then I realised that I had spent most of this school year with older students – either Crick, Magnus and Toby or the Potter-posse and realised that maybe I had just let down my guard and was more approachable.

About two minutes before midnight Crick took my hand and followed the moving crowd outside. I had neither an idea where my jacket was nor time to grab it and the cold December air hit me like a wall of ice. But I didn’t complain. The flyers for the party had advertised “the biggest firework display in the history of Morgana’s Raven, sponsored by Dr Filibuster’s Fabulous Fireworks” and I really didn’t want to miss that.

In the last minute before midnight the lady who had taken our tickets conjured a giant grandfather clock, made out of silver, encrusted with Ravens and knights from the round table to let us all count down together. I reached for my cigarette case and inhaled the last smoke of this year. Crick noticed my shaking and put an arm around me.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Happy New Year!”

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #harry potter #james & peter & remus & sirius #james potter #remus lupin #sirius black #peter pettigrew #original character

0 notes

liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years

Text

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Seven: New Year’s Eve I

I was still feeling stuffed when we got back to our house in Marlowe's Creek. Christmas always meant three days of gluttony. It ended with a late boxing day lunch, after which we had coffee, chatted a bit with my continent bound extended family and then flooed home.

Armed with a mountain of presents I entered my room and breathed in the familiar scent of dad's favourite detergent and my favourite perfume.

The entire family had decided that we didn't need dinner and that everybody would just organise their stuff and unpack before we would get together to watch a film. That was another Christmas tradition of ours: no dinner but films.

I had thrown my clothes into two piles, one for the wash and one for the wardrobe, and was about to go through my presents and give them new homes when a bird tapped on my window. The owl wasn't mine and didn't look familiar either but I let it in nonetheless.

It shook of some very wet snow before presenting its leg to me. I untied the letter and the owl was gone again. Quickly I opened the letter and looked at the signature, which turned out to be three names: Pettigrew, Potter and Black. In their letter they informed me that while they enjoyed my handcrafted Christmas cards they were offended by the homemade biscuits I had sent each of them because we had agreed to not do presents. They also assured me that Remus surely felt the same and would tell me so once he arrived at the Potters’.

Other than that they were all fine and had had lovely holidays. They were looking forward to the party at the Raven and suggested that I could come by if I was bored.

Before turning back to my presents, I wrote back saying that I had a lot of plans for the next couple days but that some involved Godric's Hollow and we could maybe meet there. Then I very slowly tidied up my room and popped down to the living room to enjoy a tea and some quality family time.

Before going to bed I wrote to Milla asking how she was doing. On the train ride back to London Pettigrew had told us that Remus had beat himself up about being too shy but didn’t want to say anything more. That calmed Milla down a bit but made her worry whether he would ever be not too shy.

She decided to pretend she wasn’t upset and send him a Christmas present and card with which she would hint she’d like to go out some time. And when she said hint she meant tell him. He hadn’t yet gotten back to her and died of curiosity.

My plans for the time between Christmas and New Year’s consisted mainly of more traditions. Some time when we were all still toddlers Milla’s, Crick’s and my parents had decided that it would be fun to take us to the Winter Market in Godric’s Hollow to get some candy and ride the merry-go-round until we got sick. We’d done exactly that until Crick had started Hogwarts. From that moment onward we all felt more grown up and stopped standing in line for the merry-go-round, instead spending some of the Christmas money on trinkets and new accessories and a whole lot of hot chocolate. It was one of those things that our parents had given up on about three years ago because they didn’t really feel like going out to see each other but us kids loved it too much to let go.

Normally, I would swing by Milla’s and we’d walk over to the Crickets’ where either their parents or one of the older brothers would pack all of us in the car and get us to Godric’s Hollow. When one of their parents drove us, we’d agree on a pick-up-time, when one of the older Cricket boys drove, we could stay as long as we wanted.

This time was different however, since the Scribe-Andersons had cruelly decided to go on a skiing holiday, there was no one for me to pick up before heading to the Crickets’ and so they came to fetch me.

Tristan sat behind the wheel, his girlfriend Alanna next to him. I crawled into the back and sat next to Crick who bumped knees with Jonas.

“Same procedure as last year, Miss de Witt?”, Tristan asked when I sat comfortably.

“Same procedure as every year, Tristan.” Alanna looked from one of the Cricket brothers to the other and then to me.

“What’s that mean?”, she asked curious and suspicious. It was her first time spending Christmas with her boyfriend’s family rather than her own. As I understood she had arrived on the afternoon of Christmas Day and was planning to stay until the second of January. She and Tristan were not coming to the Raven, though.

“That means that we park the car at the carpark close to the old church and have a cup of hot chocolate at the first stand that sells them before spending an hour looking at stupid jewellery and finally getting to one of the beer stands”, Jonas explained expertly. Alanna laughed.

“Sounds good. Any chance I”ll get to dance tonight?”

“I mean that would be new but why not. As long as I’m with you my parents won’t get worried”, I answered, ignoring all three Crickets shaking their heads. None of them liked dancing.

With an annoyed groan Jonas leaned forward to look at me, then he asked:” How much trust do your parents actually have in us? It’s not like we’d be capable of controlling you. If you decided to run off with some random 25 year old, we’d go ‘oh no, stay’ and then be intimidated by that wardrobe of a guy and let you leave.”

I laughed. “What kind of guys do you think I’m into?”

“A matter of speech, Jette. And I don’t know, since you don’t ever have a boyfriend.” He shook his head in disapprovement.

“One would think somebody who grew up treating me like a little sister would be delighted by my not-dating.”

“I am. It just leaves me with the wildest ideas over your preferences. Horror scenarios. Nightmares.” I reached over Crick and hit Jonas.

“Which gets even worse”, Tristan got in on the topic, “when we consider the only boy you ever liked was Nate.”

Alanna made a very weird sound and turned to the back seat. “You would make such a cute couple!”

“Ah! What is it with everybody? I was thirteen, people!”

“And I don’t see why I would worsen anybody’s nightmares. I’m quite the gentleman. She could do way worse than me. Remember who she went to Slug’s party with?” Crick looked at Jonas who smirked.

“With a friend who couldn’t have gone otherwise. Once again proving her neverending kindness and sense of justice and loyalty. Making her too good for any living man?”

“Wow, they really do think you’re their little sister, huh?” Alanna had turned around again and looked at me a compassionately.

“Wait until they’ve had a couple of pints. Usually, they get all whiny. There have been tears.” This time I got hit.

“Too good for any living man? Do you want her to stay lonely for the rest of her life?”, Crick asked.

“If nobody can live up to my standards, she’ll have to.”

“Jonas Johnathan, who put you in charge of my life choices?”

We bickered until we reached the little parking lot by the church and only stopped when we spotted the first market stand that sold hot chocolate.

“I’m very tempted by the spritzer of rum, they advertise”, Jonas started thinking out loud, eyeing both Crick and me. Theoretically, we were too young to drink spirits without parental supervision. Jonas on the other hand had just turned eighteen and probably wanted to live out his freedom.

Tristan made the call and got five rum-chocolates, handed me one cup with a wink. It warmed my hands, throat and heart immediately. This was how Christmas break had to feel. The only thing that missed was Milla but even without her I felt like I was home. Like this was right. Harmonic.

And then, some woman screamed at the sound of glass shattering and a very tall boy with sand-coloured hair apologised profusely, while several voices laughed. While I still wondered if it could be that the Potter-posse had really come to the market after assuring me it was childish and boring, Crick already sighed and tried to block my view of the tall boy.

“Really?”, I managed after putting down my mug.

“No idea what you’re on about.”

“Really? It’s not enough that you three plan out my love life, now you also decide who I can say hello to?”

“No more rum for Libby, goes to her head immediately, I think she’s hallucinating.”

“REALLY?!”

“If I didn’t know any better, Cricky, I thought you felt threatened by those clowns”, the eldest Cricket grinned.

“Fortunately, you do know better.”

“Cricket, is that you?” No doubt. That was one hundred percent Potter’s voice. Which meant the very tall apologising boy must have been a recently arrived Remus and the other laughter had originated from Pettigrew and Black.

Crick groaned and ignored the question. Potter repeated it, this time sounding a lot closer. He probably stood right behind Crick’s broad shoulders.

“No. It’s not”, Crick tried one last time but was already turned around by the elbow. When he stood sideways he revealed that Potter did stand right behind him. His face lit up when his look found mine.

“De Witt! You’re really doing this.”

“Would I lie to you?” He pulled me into a quick hug. “Merry Christmas, mate!”

“Merry Christmas, Potter.” Black pushed Potter to the side and took my mug out of my hands to assault me with a hug but stopped when he caught a wiff of it. “Goods! Is that rum I smell? How very un-prefect of you.”

“And a jollygood Christmas to you, Black.” Instead of proceeding with his aggressive hug he just took a huge gulp of my hot chocolate giving Pettigrew the chance to put his arms around me. “Those biscuits were delicious. Thanks so much.”

“Oh, please. No need to thank me.”

“We did say no presents”, Remus playfully scolded me as he leaned in for a hug. “We all feel terrible for not having gotten you anything.”

“First of all: no, you don’t. Second of all: A tiny tin of biscuits hardly qualifies as a Christmas present. Especially, since I baked them without you in mind.”

“Nah, definitely qualifies”, found Potter. “We didn’t pay for them and they came on Christmas Day. Present. On Christmas. Christmas Present. “He took my mug from Black, took a sip and coughed. “I thought he was joking about the rum!”

“Nope.”

“Well, Merry Christmas, Cricket”, Remus shook Crick’s hand who still looked very unhappy.

“And other Cricket”, he then added, recognising Jonas. When he looked at Tristan and Alanna, he hesitated a second. “And another Cricket?”

“Tristan, and my girlfriend Alanna. Merry Christmas...”

“Remus. Lupin.”

“Merry Christmas, Remus”, Alanna smiled a very warm and welcoming smile at Remus first, then the other three.

“Did - by any chance – one of you go to Slug’s Christmas party with Jette?” She was met with intrigued and confused looks, before Pettigrew slowly raised his hand.

“Would you say that she proved her neverending kindness and sense of justice and loyalty by going with you?”, she bore into Pettigrew’s eyes.

“Uhm... no? I’d say she was a mate.”

“Yeah, like Potter was to Nica. Can we move on, please? Potter, is there any of my chocolate left or...?”

Potter looked into the mug and sheepishly smiled at me. “How ‘bout the next round’s on me?”, he suggested, looking at everybody.

“I’m not complaining!”, Jonas grinned and high-fived Potter.

We had two more rounds of hot chocolate (I skipped the rum in both of those), skipped the jewellery hunt and went straight for one of the beer tents. But that wasn’t the only deviation from our tradition. The Potter-posse was still with us, joking around with the older Crickets, Alanna and me, having a great time, while Crick seemed to have given up on any complaints, shut up and drank his pints.

A lot of pints. All the pints. Too many pints. About three hours after we had gotten to the tent, he went off without saying anything and stayed gone. It was Tristan who decided that Crick had been gone too long and went to look for him. He found him quickly and explained that all the pints were indeed too many pints and that he would take Crick home to be yelled at by his parents. He looked at Jonas, Alanna and me who decided to walk home if Tristan wouldn’t feel like coming back and wished him good luck.

“Did he honestly have enough at”, Potter looked at his watch, “seven o’clock? That is a weak outing. I expected more from Cricket.”

“In his defence”, I said “he probably had between twice and thrice as much beer as you guys. That should give him some benefit of doubt, huh?”

“Yeah, he drowned his sorrows from the moment you lot arrived”, Jonas commented with a sly grin.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Black looked at Jonas with narrow eyes.

“Not your fault, young master Black. It’s just an observation.”

“Please, do not call me that, Jonas.”

“Are we on a first name base now?”

“Well, I call our Cricket Cricket. Calling all of you that would be too confusing.”

The tent got fuller and fuller as the evening went on and right when he had given up on the idea of Tristan ever coming back, he fought his way through the crowd and took Jonas’ beer out of his hands to empty the glass in one big gulp.

“Dad says to call him when we want to go home. Thought I might like a pint or two. And he’s right.”

He ordered another round and once we all had our drinks he told us how Mr and Mrs Cricket had reacted to their youngest throwing up in their livingroom.

“I’m telling you I got so scared about my car! When I found him he was already pale as the wall. Thought that the ride might give him the rest but apparition didn’t seem an option either. He would’ve covered me in … you know. So, he made it to the livingroom and then all hell broke lose.

First thought Mum and Dad would blame me – or us”, he gestured at Jonas who frowned. “But they didn’t. They just asked whether anybody else drank way too much and when I reported that you were all doing well, they put the blame on poor little Nate. Dad put him to bed, Mum cleaned up and then they planned to wake him up around seven tomorrow morning and make him tidy up the cellar without magic.

I think they waited for one of us to screw up that badly ever since I turned fifteen. But I expertly waited to get wasted until I had moved out and you are just boring.” Jonas whacked Tristan in the head.

“Does he still get to go to the Raven?”, I asked in a sudden panic when I remembered that my parents only let me go because I was going to get there and back with Crick.

“Haven’t asked that, cupcake. But Jonas goes, too, right?”

“Well, yes, but I’m at Mickey’s first. Don’t know when we’ll turn up. Sorry, Jette.”

“Oh, it’s fine. Without Crick I’m not gonna have a lot friends there anyways.” I tried not sounding really disappointed.

“Pardon me?”, Pettigrew shouted. “We’re all gonna be there. That is a lot of friends, young lady.” I smiled.

“If Cricket lets you down, you could probably floo over to my house and go with us. And take the same way back. Four bodyguards instead of one and a safe passage back home.”

“You mean that, Potter?”

“Sure. It’s basically no trouble at all. You’ll just have to endure my parents asking some questions about who you are and whether I behave well at school...”

“And whether Lily Evans is as pretty as he tells them”, Remus smirked.

“Well, yes. That, too.” Potter’s voice didn’t even get the least bit quieter, or nervous or ashamed. He just stood by the fact that he regularly told his parents how beautiful Lily was. He honestly was head over heels for her. No doubt.

“Thanks, Potter! I’ll let you know whether I have to take you up on this.”

Black wiggled his lighter that had a fifties pin-up-girl on it “You in, Goods?” I nodded and turned to follow him to a table with ashtrays on it when Tristan held me back.

“Look, he seems like an alright lad but I don’t think you should let him call you ‘Goods’. It’s not very respectful.” I had a couple of times before I understood what he meant. Then I laughed.

“How sweet of you. But it’s not Goods as in assets. He used to call me goodie-two-shoes all the time, ‘cause het thought that I was law-abiding and boring but that proofed to be too long a nickname, so he shortened it to Goodie and then Goods.”

“Fine. I’ll believe that. And I’ll allow it.”

“Gee, thanks, Tristan.” I followed the boys to the small table they had commandeered.

“Not very aware of his limit, your boyfriend, is he?”, Remus grinned while finishing his pint.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever. He’s not good with alcohol, Goods.”

“Usually, he is. I’ve never seen him get that drunk. Normally, he has to walk me home from all kinds of parties, so my parents will let me go at all. And because of that he stays within his limit.”

“This time both his brothers were there, maybe he just wanted to use his chance to not babysit”, Potter suggested. I wanted to answer to that but then realised that he had just called Crick my babysitter and decided to just puff my cigarette for a while. Potter picked up on it.

“I don’t mean that you need to be babysat, de Witt. I’m sure you’re a lot of fun and nobody would need to get sloshed to hang around a party with you, but if he likes to drink this actually was his chance to do so, since he wasn’t supposed to bring you home.”

I grumbled a bit.

“Nah”, it came from Pettigrew. “His brother said that he was drowning his sorrows. Something’s up. Probably has nothing to do with de Witt.”

“Don’t bet your life on that”, Black smirked, winking at Remus who winked back.

“What do you know about Crick that I don’t?”, I asked raising my eyebrows.

“So sweet and innocent”, Remus grinned. “Got no idea.”

“Yeah, well, neither do I”, Pettigrew confessed.

“Then you’re just as sweet and innocent.” Pettigrew and I both rolled our eyes and made some very weird angered noises. Potter looked at Remus first, then Black. “You two have a theory. You think you know what his sorrows are. You’ve known this for a while. Your theory has had time to be tested and confirmed.” Both his friends nodded trying not to laugh.

“And you didn’t tell either of us!”, Potter looked like my mum when I didn’t do a chore, I told her I’d take care of right away four times already.

“Well, no”, Remus answered very matter-of-factly while Black shot me a knowing look.

“Goods will understand that some theories can’t be discussed with the broad public until they’ve been confirmed by those involved.” His stare continued for two more seconds. My eyes went to Remus and then back to Black. He nodded ever so slightly.

“Don’t tell me this is just like that!”, I yelled.

“Sort of”, Black answered.

“I was thirteen! How do people not get that! Seriously, you gonna make me want a drink!”

“I do everything siriusly”, he laughed.

“What do you mean, you were thirteen?”, Remus asked extremely casually. So much so that it was obvious to me that he hadn’t miss my look at him. Then again, he and Milla seemed to be on the right track, so maybe he didn’t really care to get into that.

“What do you mean?”, I asked back.

“What does anything – What does our theory have to do with you being thirteen?” Right, I hadn’t told them about that. Damn.

“When I had a crush on Crick. I was thirteen. Swear to Merlin it’s haunted me ever since.”

“You were in love with that clean-cut bore?” Black gave me a look I would have expected if I had just announced that I’d joined the deatheaters.

“I was thirteen. And, no! I had a crush on him. One that fully disappeared when I met Lucien that summer on holiday. Why is everybody so hung up on that?”

“I didn’t even know about that. Does he know?”, Remus inquired further.

“Yes. I told him end of third year. He was very sorry that he just saw me as a friend. Then I met Lucien...” I lost track for a moment when I thought about Lucien’s ocean blue eyes and his caramel skin. What might he be up to these days?

“And the crush was a thing of the past”, I found my train of thought again. “It’s no big deal.” Remus and Black exchanged another one of those annoying knowing looks.

“Ugh!” I turned around and went back to the Crickets and Alanna. I ordered my first alcoholic beverage of the night - not counting the hot chocolate of which I had had two sips –, a shot and downed it in one go.

“What have they done to you?”, Jonas chuckled but I chose not to invite him to give me his opinions on my life choices.

Around nine we left the market and went into a small but packed muggle pub just across the street. Alanna really wanted to dance. I had returned to the Gryffindor boys to give them a courteous good-bye – my parents had raised me well – but instead of just waving they decided to join us.

So, we entered the pub as a party of eight that very quickly began to shrink. Jonas ran into a vamp of a young woman at the bar, handed us our drinks and then disappeared with her immediately after entering. Black spotted the prettiest girl I had ever seen across the room, said: ”I’ll just go make her fall for me” and went to chat her up, resulting in a rather involved snogging-session; and Potter got chatted up by a girl at least five years older than him.

When they realised that Jonas wouldn’t return anytime soon, Alanna and Tristan went to the small dancefloor and I was left with Remus and Pettigrew.

“Unbelievable”, I snorted while my eyes wandered from Jonas at the bar with his hand all over the vamp, to Black who performed some acrobatic moves with his tongue and then to Potter who played with the older girls’ hair and was just about to lean in for a kiss.

“Normal Thursday, really”, Pettigrew commented dryly and finished his Lager.

“You’re joking! I’ve never seen any of them do that!”

“Oh, not in school, of course. James can’t have Evan think that he’s not fully and completely devoted to her and Sirius doesn’t want the drama of too many exes in one place. But during holidays? Normal Thursday”, Pettigrew explained.

“Am I holding you two back? I wouldn’t wanna mess up your Thursday routine.”

“Right, de Witt, because I can’t run fast enough from all the girls who throw themselves at me.” More sarcasm had never come from Peter Pettigrew. I was rather impressed.

“I didn’t mean to upset you...”

“I know”, Pettigrew grinned at me apologetically.

“And I am not that in demand either. We just drink, maybe dance if we feel crazy and watch the inevitable drama unfold. It’s quite entertaining”, Remus smiled.

“You know, I have a feeling that you are in demand. A lot”, I disclosed thinking back to my conversation with Milla after Sluhorn’s party. Remus blushed a bit.

“No idea what you mean”, he said but his smile went from one of his ears to the other.

“Course you don’t. Did she write for Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get a present?”

“Yeah.” He blushed again.

“I’d call that in demand. You should, too.”

“Has she said anything?”

“Thought you had no idea what I meant...” He gently punched me in the shoulder while Pettigrew was laughing like a wildling.

“Did she, though? Say anything?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I’m bound by the guidelines of being a best friend.”

“Mind telling Sirius about those? I’m pretty sure he’s lost his copy judging by the look you exchanged earlier”, Remus answered. I grinned up at him raising my shoulders and he grinned back.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You have to have more than just one Lucien, right?”

“Ha! Well, maybe more than one but nothing that would reach those levels.” I gestured at Black who basically lay on one of the tables and Potter who had now started his own very involved snogging session.

Both, Pettigrew and Remus laughed. “Then you’re officially one of us!”, Pettigrew decided.

“How crazy do you feel?”

“Pardon?” Instead of answering Pettigrew took Remus and me each by one hand and dragged us to the dance floor.

The music was good and the time flew. We had our fun thinking up the most outrageous moves and testing our slowdancing skills on one another. I had to admit that it was rather practical to have male friends to practice with. There was no nervousness or inhibition because there was no romantic or sexual tension involved.

The inevitable drama that Remus had foretold started somewhere between eleven and midnight. We had joined Tristan and Alanna at the bar for a well-deserved break and smoke and wondered aloud where Jonas was. We learned that he had decided to leave with his little vamp and I was pretty impressed with him. I wasn’t as good friends with him as with Crick but I thought I knew him and I also thought he wasn’t the one-night stand kind of boy. But, then again, maybe he just needed a distraction from his thing for Elaine. Crick had not gotten into broom closets with her ever since our talk about it but she had gone back to her very prude ways and didn’t seem like Jonas had an actual chance with her.

We were discussing his possible nightly adventures when we heard some quite aggressive yelling from the other side of the dancefloor. The music was loud, there were masses of people talking and we could still hear some of the words that were yelled. Remus, being the tallest, could see to the corner of the room where the shouting originated from and frowned. “Great”, he said, looking at Peter, twitching his head towards the noise.

They both started squeezing through the crowd to get to the far corner and because I was curious and wanted to be able to tell this story first hand, I followed them. It turned out that against my initial guess it wasn’t Black that had gotten in trouble, but Potter. A giant bloke with arms as thick as treetrunks and short blond hair stood towering over him and kept yelling. Potter seemed annoyed but neither intimidated nor ashamed, which led to even more shouting on the giant’s part. His whole demeanour had something rather army-esque and I expected him to punch Potter any second. The closer we got the more words we could actually understand and the clearer it became that the unreasonably tall soldier was the boyfriend of Potter’s older woman.

“...pathetic little boy like you! I’ll scrub the floor with you and your dumbass glasses!”

“Look, mate, I had no idea she had a bloke, okay? If I had I had wished her good night and gone about my business. Seems to me you oughta be screaming at her, not me.”

“How dare you call her a slut?!” The giant moved towards Potter who just stayed where he was, not even flinching. On his other side I spotted Black, a little out of breath and slightly dishevelled but with his game face on, scanning the room and finding Remus and Pettigrew which apparently motivated him to stand up straighter.

“I’m not calling her a slut. I’m saying that she came to me and chatted and didn’t protest when I kissed her. How am I supposed to know that she has a boyfriend?” Potter was still coolness in person.

“That’s not what she said to me, Four-eyes. She said you forced yourself on her.” Somehow that comment made me furious. How on earth could anybody think that Potter would do such a thing? He was the kindest and sweetest boy. Irritatingly arrogant, sure, but kind and sweet and respectful of girls all ages and sizes. Without completely realising it, I stepped forward and in between Potter and the giant.

“Listen up! That boy does not know how to force himself on anybody! Your girl got a taste for some young blood and basically begged him to take her home, so I’d suggest you think about why on earth she’d do that – with a minor! - and whether you deserve to be treated like a consolation price. But if you want to give the fault to anybody give it to the pretty little thing over there.” I pointed at his girlfriend who stood very calmly against the wall. The giant stared at me a little flabbergasted. I felt an arm across waist and hip and was pushed behind Potter.

“Potter, what the hell? I’m not finished yet!”

“I appreciate your standing up for me but this is my argument and if fists go flying I don’t want you in the middle of it, alright?” He had turned around and looked me right in the eyes, back turned to the scary, big man that was angry with him.

“Shouldn’t that be my decision?”

“No, you’re not the least bit in the wrong and I don’t want my problem to become yours. Sirius!” Two new hands grabbed my shoulders from behind.

“He’s got this, Goods. And he’s right, you should not get hurt, if they decide to smash each other’s faces”, he whispered in my ear, his hands gripping me firmly without hurting me. I let out a frustrated groan and directed my attention back to the giant.

“Could’ve hid behind her, I don’t hit little girls.”

“I don’t hide. Are we done here now? I’m sorry I didn’t triplecheck if she was in a relationship.”

My stepping in had obviously calmed the giant down and I suspected that Potter’s brotherly approach and care for my safety had made an impression on him, too.

“Were done", the giant hissed and left the pub.’

Black didn’t let go of my shoulders until the giant was gone for two minutes. When he didn’t return, he audibly breathed out and let me go.

“Damn, James. That was calm and cool even by your standards!”, screamed Pettigrew.

“He could’ve killed me! I need a drink.” All five of us went back to the bar, Black waving at his conquest of the night without another word.

After we had told Tristan and Alanna what had happened, I got scolded for interfering and the boys got praised for rescuing me. We stayed about another hour, dancing our feet off, then Tristan asked to use the pub’s phone and Mr Cricket showed up just a few minutes later. The Potter-posse came outside with us, said goodnight and turned to go home, too.

“Oi, de Witt!”, Potter shouted when they had nearly disappeared out of sight. “Remember to let me know if you need us to take you the Raven, yeah?”

“Sure thing, Potter. Thanks! And sweet dreams, boys!”

#marauders fanfiction #marauders era #harry potter #james potter #james & peter & remus & sirius #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #original character

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