Practice, Pudding, and Pinches
"Jackson! Get your arse over here before I kick it right off the team!" Captain James Potter screamed at his fellow chaser Margaret Jackson as she exited the locker room at a slow stroll. Potter rolled his eyes and turned away to hide his smile as his teammate stuck her tongue out at him as a challenge to his threat. Meg, as she was fondly called by everyone, quickly plaited and tied off her long chestnut hair before mounting her broom. The wind rushed around her, raising goose bumps on the bare flesh of her legs and a bright smile emerged on Meg's flushed face as she rose into the air to join her impatient captain and teammates.
"Stop showing off!" the best beater in the school and notorious ladies' man, Sirius Black yelled at his spunky teammate as she passed him practically vertical on her shiny new broom. Meg laughed at his childish pout as she flew circles around him, whipping his shaggy black hair into a makeshift beehive.
Adverse to any sort of change unless absolutely necessary, Captain Potter conducted his practices the same way every time. Despite the ruthless work out of the first hour and a half of practice, each member of the team perked up when scrimmage began. Two minutes into the game, Meg had gained control of the quaffle and was making her way to the goal when a bludger whipped by her ear. Looking over her shoulder, Meg saw the team's other beater Philip Gogarty flying away. She smiled and continued towards the goals. She passed the quaffle to Potter as he came up on her right.
Meg glanced to her left where Sirius Black flew, his bat at the ready as though it was his soul purpose in life to protect her. Her frustration growing, Meg feinted and fell behind Sirius, making herself a more open target for Phil, but still a challenge. She spun out of the way as Phil sent a bludger towards her again. She flashed an encouraging grin at Phil, but he did not see it because Sirius was blocking his view, waving his arms in fury and thoroughly invading Phil's personal space. Meg's smile became a frown as she broke formation and flew to the two beaters. She managed to get between Black and Phil and shoved the furious Marauder away from their teammate.
"What are you doing? Phil was just practicing!" Meg shouted at the usually laid back charmer. Black glared at Meg and then shifted to look at Gogarty.
"Just remember what I said. This is practice not a game. You don't have to be quite so accurate," Black growled and turned, flying towards Potter and the rest of the team. Meg rolled her eyes at Black's strange behavior.
"Don't worry about him. You were doing really well Phil, but next time aim for the abdomen rather than the shoulder. It's much bigger and will stun your target a little longer than a shoulder blow." Meg patted her teammate's shoulder before flying towards the rest of the team. Potter had blown his whistle and was waiting for her and Gogarty to join the circle. Black zoomed from his spot next to Potter and parked next to Meg, who ignored his cheerful smile, his trademark attempt to apologize without actually saying it.
"Good practice everyone. Same time next week. Now hit the showers. You all smell horrible," the captain finished with a smirk and a wink, before hightailing it towards the ground.
Everyone chuckled and followed Potter in the great race for showers. Though the locker rooms provided more than enough showers for the ten players, there was always a fight to get someone else's usual shower, just for fun. Meg laughed at her scurrying teammates as she flew towards the stands where her best friend and biggest fan Lily Evans had watched and waited through the entire practice.
"'Lo Lils. I'll just be a few minutes, do you mind waiting?" Meg asked cheerfully, scanning the skies around her for any sign of the pesky Sirius Black.
"Do I ever mind?" Lily returned with a laugh. Meg wiggled her eyebrows in what was meant to be a questioning manner, but her efforts only made her friend laugh more and shake her head. "What exactly are you trying to do, Meg?"
"Geez, what good are you Lily? Is Black hanging around?" Meg asked with a sigh as she shook her head at her highly intelligent friend's obliviousness.
"What? No, he went in ages ago. Why would he be 'hanging around'? All the girls from the fan club went inside before the scrimmage."
"I dunno, Lily. He was acting strange today. Didn't you see him confront poor Phil?" Lily shook her head. "Oh, well. I'm going to get clean now," Meg shrugged her shoulders and flew away with a wave to her red headed friend.
"Good luck with that," Lily shouted after her. Meg laughed as she landed at the door to the locker rooms. She followed the familiar hall to the girls' section and put her broom into her locker. After freeing herself from the protective gear, Meg undressed and hopped into the closest shower, not bothering to see if her usual shower was being used by one of her teammates. With the grime and sweat, Meg washed away any thoughts of Black and his odd behavior. She finished her shower, refreshed and cheerful and got dressed in her school clothes. She muttered a half-hearted tergeo, cleaning most of the dirt from her practice clothes, before exiting the locker room and joining Lily on the Pitch.
--
The spirit-lifting smells of dinner wafted through the open doors of the Great Hall. The two friends entered the large room to find that the food had already appeared on the long tables, and their schoolmates had been enjoying dinner for quite some time. Spotting some empty space on the bench, Lily led Meg down the aisle and grabbed the seats. The girls filled their plates with the most appetizing side dishes and entrées. The friends ignored the usual glares from several of their female schoolmates who choose to hate them simply because of James's fascination with Lily and Meg's close relationship with her mischievous teammates.
"So, what was Potter's come-on this afternoon that put you in such a foul mood?" Meg managed to ask between large, unladylike bites of shepherd's pie.
Lily finished chewing a bite of bread and sighed, "Nothing too original. He winked and tossed a flower at me. If it weren't Potter and if the flower hadn't hit me square in the eye, it would have been quite romantic."
"What?" Meg gasped, her voice cracking with surprise.
"What? Oh, I mean, it was…Speak of the devil." Lily nodded towards the entrance where Potter and Black had just entered. The two wildly popular boys sauntered down the aisle towards the girls. James smiled sheepishly at Lily as he passed. She grunted in response and shoveled a piece of bread into her mouth. Black gently patted Meg's head, flashing his winning smile as he did so. Meg grunted and swung behind her, trying to hit her assailant. He laughed as her fist whizzed by him with a good four inches in between.
"Good try, Meg," he chuckled as he continued down the table to his posse. The usual crowd of silly fan-girls that surround the Marauders had grown especially large and susceptible to Sirius's charms over the years. Sirius particularly enjoyed having the girls there to admire him, but never acknowledged them. A wave of gasps and general confusion spread through the Great Hall as Sirius turned away from his friends and his fan club and returned to Lily and Meg's spot at the table where he squeezed in between them, smiling cheerfully as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
"Um…yes? Can we help you?" Meg asked skeptically.
"Hmm? Oh, no. Well, actually, you could pass me the potatoes." Black grinned and held out his hand for the bowl of boiled potatoes. Shocked and unsure of how else to react, Meg silently handed the bowl to the ever-confusing Sirius Black.
"Won't your gal pals be missing you, Black?" Lily chimed in, sneakily asking the question that was running through everyone's mind. Why was Sirius Black sitting away from his admirers?
"I'm not sure. I've never really done anything like this. They probably didn't even realize I came in," he answered nonchalantly through a mouthful of potato. Meg grimaced at the lovely view of half chewed vegetable and decided to attempt finishing her dinner before asking anymore questions.
The main course drew to a close and the desserts began to appear on the table. A shining golden bowl appeared in front of the strange trio full of soft, giggly chocolate colored pudding. Meg gasped and clapped her hands in delight. Black stared at her in bewilderment as she pointed the bowl out to Lily, who joined her in her revelry. Noticing the confused expression marring Black's handsome features, the girls exploded into giggles. Meg slowly reached across the table to grab the bowl of pudding and noticed several glares aimed in her direction from down the table. Her smile faded as she eased back into her seat. She served herself, Sirius and Lily large helpings of pudding and placed the bowl on the table.
Sirius had already begun to eat his helping when Meg turned to him and asked, "Didn't you say that your fan club wouldn't notice that you weren't sitting with them?"
"Huh?" Sirius replied after swallowing. Meg grabbed his head and forcefully turned it towards the glares. He coughed uncomfortably and shook away from her hold.
"Oh, that. That's nothing. They'll get over it. It's just a bit of jealousy," he explained calmly before returning his attention to his pudding. Lily scooped herself a second helping, but Meg had yet to touch the generous helping in her bowl.
"Jealousy? Of what exactly?" Meg asked in a forced calm and curious tone. "Black! What are they jealous of?" she asked more forcefully, revealing her mounting frustration.
Sirius swallowed the last bite of pudding from his bowl and licked half of it before answering, "You, of course."
Leaving Meg stunned and furious, Sirius patted his friend's head once more, rose from the table and quitted the Great Hall with the same cocky swagger he used any time he knew people were watching him. Meg turned to her friend for reassurance, but was only greeted with the childish picture of Lily's face buried in her bowl. Meg rolled her eyes and sighed. The agitation in her friend's sigh caught Lily's attention and forced her to leave the heaven of her pudding bowl.
"Meg, what's up?" Lily asked, but received only a burning glare before Meg turned her attention to her untouched pudding and took a large bite. Lily's brow furrowed in concentrated worry as her friend threw down her spoon and left the table without a word. She followed Meg, keeping up with her long strides by going two at a time up the marble stairs. Unsure of the problem, Lily refrained from asking any prying questions. Friends since the second year, Lily and Meg had learned how to communicate despite their strikingly opposite dispositions. The friends had reached the third floor before Meg turned on her fiery haired companion and loosed her emotions.
"Lily was the pudding really that good? Did you honestly miss everything that happened just now?" Meg's livid voice echoed off the stones walls of the corridor. Lily absorbed the shock of her friend's anger, and then let it pass away. Obviously, Lily's addiction to pudding was not the real source of Meg's anger.
"Well, the pudding was quite delicious tonight, but I'm not totally oblivious. You're probably upset because Black just made us, mostly you, a target for his fan club." She shrugged as she summed up the situation.
"That's the genius I know and love!" Meg wrapped her arm around her friend's shoulder, her frustration ebbing as they continued up the stairs. "Now we have to devise a plan to get me off of the psychos' RADAR or I am dead meat."
Lily laughed at Meg's slight overreaction but became serious when she saw the somber expression on her face. While some hysteria is without cause, Meg had personally witnessed the horrendous effects of being one of Black's girlfriends when the fan girls get their hands on you. As many burns, scrapes, and bruises as she had bandaged, Meg had also had the responsibility of reversing hexes, potions and jinxes put on the poor girls that were "lucky" enough to date Sirius Black and end up in the Hospital Wing.
"Well, we need to make a list of your options. You could ignore Black for a while, but that might make him angry and then he'd pay even more attention to you," Lily began to brainstorm out loud, contradicting and negating most of her ideas until Meg became desperate for any ideas that would not lead to utter disaster.
"I could talk to him, I guess," she finally suggested when Lily had been silent for a moment. Lily shrugged her shoulders and gave the password to the Fat Lady.
"Good evening, loves," the Fat Lady greeted the pair with cheer and then hiccupped. She had obviously been into her favorite drink that evening.
"Not really," Meg mumbled as she entered the portrait hole and stepped into the mostly deserted Common room. Lily mock gagged as she pointed out a couple getting cozy in the shadows. Meg suppressed her chuckles and led her friend to the couch in front of the fire. According to their post-practice routine, the girls hopped over the back of the large sofa in front of the fire and landed with contented sighs on the couch. Meg squirmed and wiggled, trying to flatten the lumps in her cushion to their usual comfortable squishiness and, glancing to her left, noticed Lily doing the same.
"Is the couch a bit lumpy tonight?" Meg posed the question going through both of their minds. Lily nodded in the affirmative and jumped up from the couch with a scream. Meg stared at Lily's shocked face.
"What's wro-?" Meg began to ask before screaming and jumping off the couch, rubbing a sore spot on her backside where she had been pinched. "Bloody Hell! What was that?"
"You have a very nice ass, Meg. Has anyone ever told you that?" Sirius chuckled and sat up from his lounging position. He patted the couch on either side of him and tilted his head in invitation. Lily rolled her eyes and stormed off towards the Heads' Dorm across the room. "Did I do something to upset her?" Sirius grinned and slouched against the couch, letting his head fall backwards. Meg didn't answer him but sat down anyway, knowing that Lily would be pissy for hours because of Sirius's behavior.
"What exactly do you girls think you were doing? You didn't even check to see if anyone was here!" Sirius laughed and draped his arm along the couch behind Meg's shoulders. Black scooted toward her with a goofy grin on his face. Meg frowned at him, and he backed away but only about an inch.
"Black, I have a question or really more of a request," Meg stated without looking at him.
"Oh really? What is it you need to say Miss Jackson?" Sirius asked in a business-like tone. Meg scowled at him and punched him hard on the shoulder.
"I'm serious," she said. Before Sirius could react to her mistake, she covered his mouth with her hand. "Don't say it. I know you're Sirius, but I really do need you to listen, okay?" He nodded his head and the mischief left his eyes, so Meg removed her hand. "Good, now what I wanted to ask you is will you please not pull any more stunts like dinner tonight?"
"What do mean by 'stunt'? I just wanted to sit with you guys, my lady pals," he barely got through the sentence with a straight face before falling over from the force of his bark-like laughter. Meg fiercely smacked him in the back of the head. He sat up, pouting at her and rubbed the tender spot.
"Alright! I won't be nice to you for a while. Happy?" He conceded, still rubbing his head. Meg laughed at his downtrodden expression, leaned towards him, and kissed the spot where she had hit him.
"Thanks, Black!" Meg sprung up from the couch and then ran across the room and up the stairs to tell the news to Lily.
"You're welcome," Black shouted after her.