DISCLAIMER: All characters, places, terms, etc. except my original ones belong to our Queen, the lovely JK Rowling. Enjoy!
SIRIUS
"Hurry up Padfoot!" Prongs exclaimed from in front of me, his cart bouncing and squealing in rusty protest.
I smiled and picked up the pace, passing my best mate with ease. Having the patronous of a dog had its advantages.
Without a flinch, we collided into the wall and stumbled onto the platform. The Hogwarts Express was already there, threatening to leave us behind with every stalling chug.
With more than a little childish shoving, Prongs and I pushed onto the Express, panting and sighing in relief as we crashed in our Marauder compartment. Moony, always the punctual one, sat in the window corner, the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile.
"Hey Moony! Long time...no see." I managed, a sly smile surely covering my tired features. In fact, the last time I'd seen Moony was a mere three weeks ago. For us Marauders, however, that was as long as long could be.
James suddenly frowned and looked around the compartment. "Moony, where's Wormtail?"
"Not sure. The train will be leaving any time now-"
"WAIT!" A voice ripped through Moony's answer, and we all crowded the window to see Wormtail himself hobbling toward the Express, his trunk flailing. The Express had already started moving, but just in time, he hopped in, falling face first into our compartment.
"Hey Wormtail." Prongs smirked, unable to keep the mocking smile from his face. Even Moony was silently laughing in the corner.
"Oh shut up...you-you gits!" Peter spat, heaving himself onto the bench.
With smiles still curving our mouths, the three of us peered out the window, watching the scenery blur by.
Wormtail's fuming was over as soon as the clatter of the sweets trolley was heard. He jumped up as the kind faced lady stopped at our compartment and all of us Marauders couldn't help but get excited. The trolley was the best part of the Express, as far as we were concerned.
Stocked up on enough treats to feed a horde of hippogriffs for a year, us Marauders couldn't be more content. I closed my eyes, my head back against the wall, and awaited our destination.
CRASH!
My eyes flew open to see the other Marauders, just as startled as I, their eyes trained on the door to our compartment.
In a heap on the floor on the threshold of our now-open door was two girls, their faces hidden amid a frenzy of brown and blond hair.
The first one, the brunette, scrambled up, her face red as she helped the blond to her feet. She pressed her hands to her skirt, smoothing it out and grinning at us sheepishly.
"Sorry about that, uh, I'm Melody, and this is Alana." The blond Alana smiled, just as embarrassed as her friend.
"Ah, yes, hello."
There was an awkward silence; us Marauders shocked into silence.
Things were about to get interesting.
REMUS
"Hello Melody, Alana." I started, embarrassed at the silence of my friends. "I'm Remus. This is Sirius, James, and Peter." I gestured to the open bench beside me. "You can sit if you'd like."
The girls shared a glance and sat, awkward and silent. Melody rubbed her arm, where an ugly purple bruise was already starting to bloom.
"Are you okay, Melody? You took quite a nasty fall." Sirius spoke up, surprising me. The girl smiled sheepishly.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm quite clumsy, sorry for barging in on you guys." Melody managed, her voice unsure.
"It doesn't help that she has a best friend who's at least as clumsy as she is." Alana laughed, elbowing Melody playfully.
The other girl smiled again. These two were like sisters, I could already tell.
"Would you like a pumpkin pasty?" James offered kindly, one in each hand. The girls took them with matching smiles of gratitude. If Alana hadn't said they were best friends, I could've sworn they were sisters. They had the same stormy blue eyes, with rings of orange fire around the pupils.
"Right then. What houses are you in?" I asked.
"Oh, we're both Ravenclaws." Melody laughed. "Although, this one is a Hufflepuff deep inside." To which Alana responded with a laugh of her own.
Their friendship reminded me of us Marauders, and I was quite glad they were starting to get comfortable with us. They seemed kind enough.
"What year are you two? Sirius inquired gently. I had no idea as to where he was getting this gentleness.
"We're sixth years. What about you guys? What houses?"
"We're sixth years as well. All Gryffindors." Prongs replied.
"Ah, bravery and chivalry." Melody's eyes were lit with a playful fire that reminded me of Sirius.
"You could say so, although there's not a whole lot of chivalry in this git." Padfoot joked, gesturing at James, to which he responded with a joking insult of his own.
"That's a lot coming from you, dog." Prongs spat playfully.
The girls shared another glance. It was like they had telepathy or something.
JAMES
The girls were funny for sure, almost Marauder worthy.
Somehow, all my thoughts drifted to Lily Evans, and while the others engaged in conversation with the Ravenclaws, I looked out the window, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this would be the year Lily finally treated me with something other than the roll of her eyes.
"Prongs, are you awake?" Moony snapped me out of my reverie.
"Of course I'm awake Moony!" I replied, sitting up so as to not fall asleep for real.
The girls looked confused for a moment.
"Prongs? Moony?" Alana asked, her brows drawn in confusion.
"Yeah, we're the Marauders. Those are our nicknames. That's Prongs, Moony, Wormtail, and I'm Padfoot."
"Huh. Padfoot. I like it." Melody piped up, a mischievous smile on her face, to which Sirius responded with a confused yet charmed one of his own.
Alana turned to Moony. "So, who's your favorite professor?" To which Remus responded with a long winded response, like usual.
Sometimes it seemed as though he should be a Ravenclaw.
I fell back into my reverie, now that the others were too busy to snap me from it.
Wormtail was feasting on sweets, Melody had brought out a book and was reading from it while Sirius watched her expressions change with amusement, while Moony was talking to Alana.
WORMTAIL
I didn't like the girls from the start.
They had fallen unto our compartment, which, I noticed smugly, had caused a nice bruise upon Melody's arm. Plus, the other Marauders seemed to be enjoying their presence. If anything was true, it was that I didn't welcome them with open arms. Prongs had even given up two pumpkin pasties for them!
I sank down into my corner of the compartment, eating my Bertie Bott's Beans and trying to block out the high sounds of their laughter mingling with that of my mates.
This was going to be a long day.
MELODY
Despite the uncomfortable awkwardness of tripping and falling in front of them, the Marauders seemed nice. I'd heard of them the last few years, but had never actually seen them.
The rumors were all true: Sirius was a sarcastic prankster, as was James in a sense; Remus was bookish and kind, and Peter, well, he didn't seem to like Alana and I all that much.
Pretty soon, we were at Hogwarts, the great castle just ahead. It never ceased to amaze me.
I closed my book, leaving the fraying cloth bookmark on my last page.
I looked up to find Sirius watching me, an amused smile playing across his features.
"What?" I asked challengingly, a hint of a smile creeping up on me.
"The expressions you make when you read. They're funny." Sirius laughed playfully. I grinned and placed my book in my bag, just seeing the roll of Peter's eyes from the corner of my vision.
I wasn't sure what his problem was, but his other friends were nice enough.
I looked over at Alana, who was engrossed in a conversation with Remus about classes. I rolled my eyes humorously. I was smart enough; I had to be to be a Ravenclaw, but the last thing I'd want to talk about was classes all the time. This was coming from the Ravenclaw who only took Divination because of the free tea.
ALANA
Hogwarts was fast approaching. Too fast, I realized with slight disappointment. Remus was a great person to talk to about classes; the year before, Melody and I hadn't had nearly enough together; I hoped this year would be different.
The Express suddenly stopped, and the great castle before us indicated that we were there. Hogwarts was my real home, and I couldn't wait to spend another year here.
"Here we are." Peter finally spoke aloud, his tone grumbling and dark. I shared a glance with Melody, and hers was asking the same question I was. What was his problem?
The other three Marauders dealt him a few glowers, and Peter, thinking better of sending a nasty retort, just huffed and grabbed his trunk, leaving the compartment and merging into the stream of students heading out.
Remus shrugged, and the other boys picked up their trunks and filed out, leaving Melody and I.
"Let's go love!" Melody exclaimed excitedly. I smiled and laughed, feeling the giddiness that always came with coming back to Hogwarts.
SIRIUS
The girls were interesting, to say the least.
Alana seemed kind, and Melody was pretty humorous. If I hadn't been told otherwise, I would've thought the girls to be sisters, what with their seemingly identical eyes and close friendship.
"Let's go, Padfoot!" Prongs urged from in front of me. The four of us broke from the stream of new students to the side, watching Hagrid coax them into his boat to cross the lake.
"Hey Wormtail, what was your problem?" Prongs glared at Peter. "You were really rude to Alana and Melody."
"Yeah, what was that about, Peter?" Remus asked. "They were nice."
Wormtail just huffed again, his rat teeth exposed. "They weren't that nice."
I was about to refute him with a few choice words my mother would be appalled by when the girls came by, smiling at the four of us, even Wormtail.
"Thanks for letting us sit in your compartment, Marauders." Melody said, her eyes twinkling with that mischievous look that made its way to her smile.
"No problem! See you at the feast!" I managed, the words I had for Wormtail making my mouth sour.
The four of us continued up to the castle, greeting old friends on the way as we filed into the Great Hall.
"SILENCE!" Dumbledore thundered. I looked around, clearly seeing the new students, their eyes wide amid a sea of cool Dumbledore veterans. After every year of his thundering, one tends to become immune to such volume.
"Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! Before you befuddle yourselves with this excellent feast, I would like to say a few words."
REMUS
After the feast, us Marauders retired to the Gryffindor dormitories, collapsing on four poster beds that were more familiar than home.
"Wormtail, we aren't finished." Padfoot threatened sleepily before being sucked into the oblivion that was sleep.
Wormtail sighed disgustedly. I could almost see the hatred radiating off his rat body.
"You're just ASKING for a punch in the face, aren't you?" Prongs responded, somehow more sleepily than Padfoot.
"Oh get to sleep, you foolish gits!" I scolded playfully, unable to keep the smile from my voice.
After a collective sigh from all four of us, we fell asleep, finally home.
"Get up, Remus!" Prongs tackled me, and I was thrown, half asleep, onto the floor. "It's the first day of school, you lazy arse! Get up!" Prongs tackled me again. I shook my groggy head, clearing it of sleepy fog and pushed my fingers through my mussed hair. Judging by the state of Prongs and the others, I probably looked like a half dead wreck.
"Jesus, Prongs. You're never this excited over school. What's gotten into you?"
Prongs popped his head out from the bathroom, his mouth covered in toothpaste.
"A new year, another chance with Lily my dear boy!"
I grinned at his foolishness and shook my head. The terrible things love does to a person.
"When you come back to the real world, Prongs, call us." Sirius rolled his eyes and shrugged on his robes. "Let's go to breakfast."
I nodded and the three of us left for the Great Hall, leaving a cursing Prongs in our wake.
At the Great Hall, I glanced over at the Ravenclaw benches, hoping to find the girls from yesterday. Sure enough, there they were, laughing over some joke that only they seemed to get.
The other Ravenclaws peered at them curiously, with more than a few wrinkles of annoyance, but they took no notice. Melody suddenly turned, and, seeing the three of us, smiled crookedly and waved. Alana turned with her, and recognition dawned upon her face as well as her own crooked smile.
"You bloody gits!" Prongs suddenly stormed over to us, slamming himself down next to Sirius and I. "You couldn't have waited for me? Really? I needed a few extra minutes to get ready, you know I need to look my best for Li-" just then, Lily herself turned, staring holes into Prongs's existence. The poor boy covered his eyes with his hands.
"I am hopeless." He moaned. I grinned and patted his back reassuringly. He was, but weren't we all?
MELODY
Like usual, it seemed as though Alana and I were on our own. We were too weird for some of the other Ravenclaws; which was saying something considering how brilliantly strange the whole lot of us were.
So, it wasn't a surprise that, over breakfast, we were alone amid a sea of our house, laughing over jokes that never got old. It was a pleasant surprise to see the Marauders, and I hoped we'd have some classes with them this year. Luckily, Alana and I had gotten every class together except Divination, which she had swapped for Muggle Studies.
"So, what do we have first?" Alana asked me as she chewed on a bagel. I took a swig of pumpkin juice and looked at my parchment schedule I had hastily written down.
"Uhm, it appears to be Potions." I squinted at my schedule. After a whole summer of not using a quill, my penmanship had suffered greatly. Alana sighed.
"Uh. Slughorn. Just what I wanted this early in the morning." She exclaimed dramatically, throwing a hand over her forehead. "How am I to survive?"
I started to laugh, and Alana soon joined in, ignoring the strange looks the other Ravenclaws were throwing our way. From the corner of my eye, I saw someone watching us, and I turned, pleased to see Remus of the Marauders. I grinned and waved.
"Who are you waving at...?" Alana turned, her face suddenly lit with recognition and a grin as she waved.
Just then, Remus turned back, and Dumbledore's voice filled the Hall once again, dismissing us to our classes.