Catch Me when I Fall
A/N: I rewrote this story a little so here it is again. The Marauders are in their 7th year at Hogwarts and I don't own any characters from the book…so don't sue me, would ya…
Shelby Jones sighed as all the food and the plates disappeared from the table in front of her and everyone stood up to leave for their next classes. She looked to her right, where Sirius was staring irritably at the table, his hand frozen in midair, apparently just about to grab something to eat. She gave a small chuckle as he stood up cursing under his breath. James and Remus were already waiting for them, with their bags thrown over their shoulders. Peter was in the hospital wing, a lost Bludger had hit him the past Quidditch game and apparently he still hadn't recovered from the shock.
"Come on girls," James said impatiently, absently running his hand through his already messy black hair, as neither Shelby nor Holly made any indication to get up.
Shelby referred to his look as "Got-out-of-bed-and-forgot-to-comb-hair" but added even if he did comb his hair with all the running his hands through it, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference anyway.
James had merely shrugged and opined, "Well, the ladies love it," which had made Holly suffer a laugh attack.
"Oh we're not girls," Shelby countered sarcastically breaking free of her thoughts, swung her legs over the bench and stood up, "We're profoundly dysfunctional adolescents."
"Speak for yourself," Holly said raising her eyebrows and followed the group out of the great hall.
"Just thought I'd save us some time," Shelby grinned and Holly nudged her in response.
Holly was the brunette beauty of the school, blue eyes, toned, with perfect features and proportions; but she didn't like showing her looks off too much. Boys stood in line to go out with her, but she hated only to be noticed for how she looked and not for the person she was. Nevertheless she lived up to her reputation and had a different boy almost every week. She was like the female version of Sirius who was the hunk of the school and had the whole speed-dating thing down as well.
Shelby watched James turn his head as a group of giggling girls walked past them, among them Lily Evans. He looked after them until they turned around a corner and walked out of sight, wrenching his neck while doing so. She bit back the urge to laugh at his behavior.
"Two words James: get a grip!" Shelby commented walking past him.
"Wait, make that three," she added quickly turning around before making a right and disappearing into her classroom.
"Is she still refusing to go out with you, mate?" Shelby heard Sirius ask James as they passed by.
"Yeah, but our chemistry is undeniable, she won't be able to resist much longer," she heard James answer causing her to shake her head amused.
She was the only one of them who had signed up for Ancient Runes, while they all continued with Divination, which they thought was fun and she found a total waste of time. After forty-five minutes of class they all met up again for Charms.
"So, which one of you is going to die this week," Shelby mocked them as they made their way through the crowded corridors.
"Sadly no one," Sirius responded, "It's just not fun anymore without dark predictions about your future."
"Ahw, why thank you?" Shelby said.
"You're welcome," he replied glibly.
But seconds later Sirius' attention was demanded by a fairly attractive Ravenclaw, who walked past them smiling seductively at him and he was busy winking back at her and stroking his black hair out of his grey eyes, a gesture at which every girl seemed to fall at his feet.
"Oh, get a room," Holly said observing the scene and the others erupted in laughter.
"I dreamt an animated musical last night, is that normal?" James asked after the laughter died down.
"If Lily was in it, yes, if not…no, and we should be seriously worried about you." Sirius answered.
"Oh…then it's all good," James said airily.
"That's gross!" Holly wrinkled her nose.
"Oh don't act blonde," James scowled.
"Excuse me, blonde over here!" Shelby said putting her hand up.
Remus looked at her black dyed hair, "You need to quit saying that every time that sentence comes up, because technically, you're not even close to blonde anymore."
Shelby was more average looking than Holly, not outstandingly beautiful but by no means ugly, just somewhere in between. But she had an own uniqueness to herself. She wouldn't compromise anything just to fit in, she didn't care if she was different and if you'd tell her how to act or dress, she'd probably do the opposite just to piss you off. Her eyes had an unusual dark shade of green and her hair had been every tone of blonde there was until she became bored of her natural color and decided to change up her look and dyed her hair chestnut and later on radically red (from a reddish shine to fire-alarm-red), every time with streaks in any possible color that didn't clash too dramatically with the hair until she dyed it all black, no streaks or anything. But being Shelby she could pull these things off.
"Whatever," Shelby replied with a dismissive wave of her hand.
A loud crash disrupted their conversation; apparently James had walked into one of the suits of armour standing alongside the walls.
"Can't have any attention distracted from you for five seconds, can you?" Shelby said shaking her head her eyes glistening with amusement.
Holly kept laughing all the way to Charms and James just muttered looking sour, "Bet you love Lily now…"
As they took their places in the classroom Remus looked searchingly around. "Have you seen Lucius lately?" he asked no one in particular.
"Maybe he's off doing some deep soul searching," Holly suggested sarcastically and James snickered at that image having forgotten his hurt pride.
"Or he's off searching for a soul," Shelby countered.
Sirius chuckled and changed the subject, "So how's that breakdown of your roommate Rachel something coming along?"
"Actually it's just Rachel," Holly teased and added more serious, "Shelby's going to talk to her after class."
"Shelby?" Sirius said skeptically, "that's like shock therapy isn't it?"
"Oh shut up," Shelby said and shot him an evil glare.
"Why am I the only one ever on the receiving end of those looks?" Sirius complained.
"Everyone's gotta have a special talent mate, pissing Shel off, that's yours!" James said as unconcerned as ever.
"Thanks for backing me up by the way," Sirius said affronted and muttered, "As if everyone else doesn't consider Shel shock therapy."
"I heard that!" Shelby said still glaring at him.
"I know, I said it out loud," Sirius shot back.
"Okay let's break this up, before they start hexing eachother or throwing things," Holly said jokingly.
But she wasn't worried, either they bickered like that or they joined forces having each other's backs with every comment someone made against either one of them. They had known eachother even before Hogwarts and knew everything about one another. It only became annoying, when they started completing each other's sentences.
"Why do you care about Rachel anyway?" Remus questioned Sirius.
"She's probably on his to do list," Holly said and added, "Literally."
"Backstabbers, the whole lot of you," Sirius muttered as the others erupted in laughter once again.
All conversations ebbed away as Flitwick entered the room and almost everyone turned their attention towards the front of the classroom.
Shelby was glad after the period was over, she couldn't bring herself to pay attention anyway; Remus's notes were mostly responsible for her getting through the years.
Big snowflakes were drifting past the windows and you could barely look outside. Shelby smiled at the thought of a snowball fight later. The castle was already decorated festively, there were only three days left until Christmas, which meant vacation started in two days. There were ornaments hanging on the trees in the great hall, wreaths on the doors, garlands along the staircases and of course mistletoes everywhere.
As every year, everybody used the mistletoes as an excuse to snog everybody and the five minute breaks between the classes usually consisted of pushing kissing couples, some more willingly then others, out of the way.
This was always a big opportunity for James to win over Lily but in the past two years he'd only succeeded once in kissing her, which he was still dwelling on. Lily obviously knew her way around the castle and carefully laid her route out every day to avoid running into James. Mistletoes were also the recurring cause Sirius and Holly showed up late for classes and even Remus got pulled away from them in the corridors from time to time. Shelby loathed the mistletoes, everytime she saw a boy walk towards her with that purposeful look on his face an alarm in her head went off that told her to run as fast as she could. The others told her she had commitment issues.
"Like one single kiss means anything," Holly always told her, "If a commitment had come with every single kiss I've been given, oh boy…"
Shelby simply insisted she wasn't into kissing random people, but deep down she knew the others had a point. She had gone out with a few boys before her first serious boyfriend, Josh, a Ravenclaw whose popularity status was similar to Sirius's, and he had hurt her more than she thought he ever could. He had cheated on her with one of her oh-so-called best friends and she had been too blind to see it and everybody in the school had known except for her. She sighed deeply and shooed all thoughts over Josh and mistletoes out of her head.
She noticed Sirius was looking at her oddly from the side, but before he could open his mouth to ask her what was wrong, she said quickly, "Charms homework sucked didn't it?"
Everybody raised their eyebrows at that wanna-be-casual comment of hers.
"Uh, Shel," Remus said carefully and looked like he was concerned for her sanity, "You copied that homework from me yesterday."
"Still," Shelby replied searching for words and ended lamely with, "It looked hard…"
She saw the others exchange brief glances until Holly said resolutely, "Shel, we've got to do something about you."
"Sure, because everybody loves to here that," Shelby muttered sarcastically and Sirius bit back a grin.
"Oh come on, I saw you giving the mistletoes your murderous looks," Holly said looking at Shelby waiting for a reaction. Since nothing happened she continued talking, "You're giving up on love and I as your friend can't let that happen! Everytime a boy, other than Remus, Sirius and James obviously, walks towards you looking like he has a mission, you panic!"
"Wow, you're not making me sound disturbed at all!" Shelby said with the same sarcastic tone as before and blew a hair out of her face.
"Shel…" Holly started again but Shelby interrupted her and stopping dead in her tracks turned around to Holly who knew the second she saw the look on her friends face that she had made her snap.
"Look, not everybody here is little Miss Perfect! I don't live in my little Miss Perfect world, with my perfect life, my perfect family and my perfect nails! I live in the friggin' real world, with real parents who don't give a shit about their only daughter!" Shelby had gotten herself worked up and neither noticed the hurt look on Holly's face, nor that that people had stopped walking by them and now stood there interested to see what was coming next.
"In my world there's no boy swooning over me every ten second but the boyfriends screwing the next bitch! So excuse me for giving up on love!" and with that Shelby stormed off in direction of the Gryffindor tower.
Holly stood there frozen. "Nice," Sirius said sarcastically beside her and she heard him clap his hands together as if applauding.
"Why don't you just go flush yourself down the toilet, Black?" Holly said rudely pushing past him.
"Seriously Padfoot, now's not the time," Remus said and followed Holly.
"What'd I do?" Sirius asked incredulously.
"You're hopeless," James said and shook his head at him.
"What?" Sirius said again but the others had already left him. Mistletoe dangling above his head.
A/N: So….what do you think? Is it horrible, is it awesome? Just review, even if you only write on tiny, little word! Come on…just click the button…it's not that hard…why are you still reading? Click it!