Hogwarts In Season by HRT

A/N: Rated M for language.

Chapter 1

When James Potter and Sirius Black arrived at Hogwarts for their first year at the wizarding school, Sirius didn't immediately notice the boy whom he would soon label as 'nice enough bloke, but a little peculiar, especially about squids.'

"Look," said James.

"Is that a 'view' look, or a see-my-point look?' I thought we'd settled that argument about the Cannons, James," Sirius replied as they stepped down from the steaming Hogwarts train.

"A view-look, you idiot!" James elbowed his friend.

"At what?" Sirius could see nothing of especial interest. There were boats, a lake, and a milling crowd of black-robed first years, though there did seem to be something impressive about that castle in the distance. "I suppose that's Hogwarts. Not bad, but I was hoping for something along the lines of Gormenghast."

"No, at that girl with the red hair."

"At a girl? Why?" A pang went through Sirius. James was noticing girls? He'd never done anything so strange before.

"Come on. Let's get into the same boat she does."

So that was how Sirius found himself sitting next to a sour-faced bloke by the name of 'Snape,' no first name offered, while opposite them sat James with the most lunatic grin aimed at the redheaded female by James' side. She recoiled and appeared to be making efforts not to be nauseous.

She didn't seem like a bad sort, this Lily Evans, though unused to leering James Potters, obviously.

Snape was curling his lip, Lily scooting away a little, and James leering harder when Sirius heard someone scream. Shouts were coming from one of the other boats. They all turned to see what the trouble was and Lily gasped. Something huge had surfaced right next to the boats, plucked a student right out of his seat, and was holding him aloft around the waist. "The Giant Squid," Snape said, raising an eyebrow. "I've heard of it."

"It has a defenseless first year right in its tentacle. Bloody marvelous," breathed James. "You just don't see a Giant Squid kidnap a bloke every day. I wish I had a camera. What a picture for the Hogwarts Student Annual."

"I don't think he likes it, James," Sirius said. "He's screaming. It looks like a rescue might be in order."

Indeed, the kidnapped boy was yelling frantically, his eyes huge with fright. "Hello? Excuse me, could someone contact a teacher? I don't mean to be a bother, but this Squid is rather--AAAAHHHH!"

The tentacle moved, drawing the boy closer to the Squid's main body. An eye the size of a dinner plate was staring at its dangling captive.

"The giant squid is an entirely carnivorous cephalopod," Snape glowingly intoned, as if recalling a favorite passage from a book, "which uses its powerful tentacles and their rows of suckers to bind the limbs of its struggling prey with the cunning of an anaconda, squeezing until almost the last breath leaves its ribs. The squid completes the kill by pushing its captive underwater. The victim thrashes to be free, but can only produce increasingly feebler resistance. Finally, when all motion stops, the squid feeds. The cephalopod moves the prey up into the very innermost core of itself, where the prey is seized by a pair of large, hard chiton nippers. These clamp down and rend the victim like a vulture's beak stabbing at a carrion-corpse, tearing its dinner into more pleasing, bite-size pieces. If the victim somehow still manages to be alive at this point, it can feel itself being ripped apart in utmost agony.

"A bit romantic, actually," Snape added, and looked as though he meant it.

Both James and Sirius recoiled.

"Sev! Stop trying to scare them. We have to rescue that boy!" Lily shouted.

It seemed, however, that the victim had grown tired of waiting for rescue. The boy had managed to remove a wand from his robe sleeve. "STUPEFY STUPEFY STUPEFY!" he screamed at machine-gun speed.

The tentacle went limp, the Squid sank, and the boy plunged into the water with a huge splash.

"He did it!" Sirius yelled. "That's so cool; illegal underage magic. We're not even supposed to know that spell yet! What a stunner! It takes a really good one to lay out a giant squid."

James poked Lily and blushed meekly when she turned his way. "I wish that were you, you know. So we could rescue you. OW!" He rubbed the spot on his chest where she hit him.

"Stop being an idiot! We have to help him. He doesn't seem to know how to swim very well and he's been doing all the rescuing himself."

The boy was dog-paddling hard, wand held between his teeth, and he was barely managing to stay afloat. The large, floppy sleeves of his robe, once wet, were weighing down his arms and dragging. "Hep!" he shrilled through the wand. "Camp swmb!"

"We cannot steer these boats," Snape reminded Lily. "Nor do we know the spell that controls them. The spell is moving us away from him and it looks like he's going to have to continue rescuing himself."

There was one boat near the swimmer, and it was towards this boat that the boy steered for aid. One of the occupants, Rudolphus Lestrange, leaned over the side as the swimmer neared. "Are you going to try for Slytherin?" he called.

"Whup!?" the boy asked around his wand in disbelief.

"I said, are you going to try for Slytherin? No point in helping you if you're aiming for one of the other houses." The other three boys with Lestrange nodded firmly in agreement.

"You filthy shites!" Lily screeched.

"Excuse me Lily," James said, trying to take her arm only to be punched again. "Hey! I was going to tell you I know--"

"James," Sirius warned. "He's going down. You'll have to impress her another day. Get to it, man."

The boy's head had already slipped underwater a few times and the expression on his face was beyond frantic. Sirius slipped his shoes off and unzipped his robe, knowing that if James didn't act fast, someone was going to have to dive into the water.

"Oh! Yes, of course," James exclaimed, drawing his wand out. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

With a squeak, the swimming boy shot right out of the water and dangled in the air, copious amounts of the lake pouring from his robes.

"Brilliant, James!" Sirius said as James directed the flying boy closer and closer to their boat.

"Wait. You're not going to put him in here? This boat is full. We don't have room for five!" Snape exclaimed. "Set him down elsewhere!"

Ignoring this, James hovered the dripping boy right over Snape's head and left him there a long moment, as if having difficulty with the spell. "Potter!" Snape bellowed. "You're getting me wet."

"Set him down!" cried Lily, trying to grab the flying boy by his robes. James suddenly regained his dexterity and lowered the boy. However, the boat sagged dangerously under the extra weight exactly as Snape had predicted.

"Are you hurt?" Lily asked, hugging the boy.

The boy seemed too dazed to answer at first. He was staring blankly across the water where the Squid had been. "Why did he grab me?" the boy asked.

"Hey mate, are you all right?" Sirius said. "We wouldn't mind knowing. And what's your name?"

"Remus," said the boy slowly, still staring across the water. "Remus Lupin."

Lily was finger-combing Remus' wet hair out of his face, and plucking strands of water-weed from his robe. James was staring at Lily's delicate touches with a walloped-cod look that said that he too, wished he had almost been drowned by the Giant Squid.

"Let's get this robe off," Sirius told the boy. He was embarrassed that he hadn't been much help earlier, but then he didn't know many spells yet and had never anticipated a giant squid attacking on the first day of school. A detention for kicking a Slytherin maybe, or a stomachache from too much dessert at the feast, but a giant squid?

Sirius pulled the robe off and helped wring it out over the side. Snape was scowling. "Quit moving, Black, you're about to swamp us. Look how low we're sitting." All of them noticed little wavelets coming right inside the boat. "Any more of this and we're going down. Who's going to volunteer to lighten us by going over the side and swimming for shore? Black? You've proved yourself useless enough. How about you?"

Upon hearing this, Remus clung hard to both Lily and Sirius. "No! There's no need. I'm already wet, so maybe I could just hang over the side while you tow me to shore."

"No," said Sirius.

"No," said James.

"Sev! Don't be so harsh!" Lily cried.

James cleared his throat for attention, looking pleased with himself. "No need."

"Uh-oh."

The small cry from Remus made them all stare at him. "It's woken up."

Across the water, the Squid was rising from the lake, its tentacles twitching in a peculiar, irritated manner. Around them the children in the various boats began to scream again.

"You'd think Hogwarts would have a better way of getting students to school," said Sirius in disgust. "What is this, the equivalent of one of those American fraternity hazings?"

However, it seemed the adults at the castle had received warning. A very large man was standing on the shore holding his hands out toward the boats, calling out the words of a spell. Suddenly the boats began to pick up speed and were moving much more rapidly towards shore.

"'Old on now, 'old on. We'll 'ave yer safe in a moment," the man was bellowing. "Aw, poor Squiddy, what's the matter, does 'oo 'ave an 'eadache?"

"Good God," said Lily.

"Poor Squiddy!?" Sirius echoed. "What about us?"

"I suppose it must be his squid, and I did stun it," said Remus, looking guilty. "Maybe I hurt it."

"DAMN the Squid!" Snape shouted. "We're going down, you idiots!"

Though the spell was speeding the other boats towards safety, the effect on their own heavily laden craft was disastrous. They were already half in the water and more was rushing over the bow. Worse, the Squid was arrowing fast through the water, its massive tentacles reaching out for them. If squids could snarl, then this squid was.

"Ahem." James cleared his throat for attention.

"Just do it, James!" Sirius yelled. "If she's not paying attention now, she never will!" Sirius had never thought that 'discovering girls' like his boneheaded friend had done today would be so hazardous to life.

"So," said Potter, annoyed. "My art is unappreciated, I see."

The water level in the boat was climbing higher and the craft began to move more sluggishly under the drag. They were all wet to the knees. Snape bared his teeth and pulled out his wand, eyeing the rapidly approaching Squid.

"No, Sev!" Lily cried. "You can't use one of the dark curses. You promised me you wouldn't!"

"Ignored. Forgotten. Dismissed. Unthanked," James intoned pompously, keeping track of the squid's approaching tentacles.

"Thank you thank you thank you!" Remus shrieked, grabbing at James' knee. "I'm sorry, I forgot to thank you! Now will you help us, please?"

Sirius had somehow gotten all tangled up with Remus, Lily, and the wet robe. No, they weren't hugging each other in terror, not at all. Then Sirius remembered an important point. "Hey," he said to Remus, "don't you know a stunning spell?"

"Oh! You're right," Remus exclaimed, drawing his wand out.

The Squid was almost on them, and Snape and Remus were just beginning to shout words, when James pointed his wand downwards at the boat and said, "Wingardium Leviosa!" The entire boat flew into the air and just missed the angry, reaching tentacles. Remus and Lily cried out, and Snape cursed.

"About time," said Sirius, vowing to learn as many combat spells as possible. Though Sirius' parents had winked at his learning a little underage magic, they'd refused to let him learn anything dangerous in case he and Regulus killed each other. At least James' parents had let him learn something worthwhile, like this flying spell.

"You'd better know what you're doing, Potter," said Snape. "By the way, isn't this illegal underage magic?"

James just smiled. Lily was looking at him as if he might be a little bit better than useless after all.

"You can let go now," said Remus timidly. "Thank you."

"But you're cold and shivering!" Lily replied. "I can't possibly."

"We're protecting you from hypothermia, mate," Sirius added, still wrapped around the boy.

"Set tha' boat down, laddie, yer over land," the big man called from beneath them.

James did so as the big man said, "Jus' a little adventure on the way to Hogwarts, 'ats all. My name's Hagrid, by the way. I'm the groundskeeper here at the school. It's all right, lad. Squiddy jus' wanted to have a look at yer. He didn't mean no 'arm. 'Ere lad, have a tot o' this." Before Remus could react, Hagrid put a bottle to the boy's mouth and tipped back a good portion. Whatever it was, it made Remus' eyes bulge out and the boy cough wildly. "'At'l make yer feel better. Have a couple of frogs, too. Chocolate's good for everything." He raised his voice. "Wring yerselves out now and everyone follow me to the great hall! There's a fire there an' everything."

"I don't think I'm supposed to be drunk for the sorting," Remus said to Sirius. "That stuff must have been a zillion proof." He unwrapped a chocolate frog as he spoke. "Stupefy!"

Watching as Remus nibbled off the frog's legs, Sirius asked, "You stun your chocolate frogs before you eat them?"

"I don't like them twitching in my mouth. When I was younger I vowed I would never hurt any living thing if I could help it."

"But they're not alive!"

Remus' expression became fierce and he glowered at Sirius, frog in mouth. "I mean it! I swore I would never lose my sense of humanity, never, ever, ever! Stupefy!" he shouted, zapping another twitching frog.

Sirius exchanged a glance with James, and they shrugged and grinned at each other. Definitely peculiar, Sirius concluded.

When they reached the great hall Remus was already tottering from the alcohol, and he was forced to lean on Sirius to stay upright. They stood by one of the great fires attempting to dry off, but Sirius was soon called to be sorted. Thoughtfully, Sirius switched Remus to Lily's shoulder before he left. Lily in turn passed Remus on to James once her name was called, and James poked Remus when the cry of 'Lupin, Remus,' came. "Your turn, mate. Stay upright now."

Swaying dangerously, Remus passed a thousand miles of tables and staring children before he reached a stool and an enormous hat. For a moment he blinked at it, then he put the hat on his head. He supposed it was appropriate to put things like stupid hats on your head when you were drunk.

Your hair's wet, boy.

Remus almost jumped off the stool. Sorry!

My brim is getting damp.

It was the squid, thought Remus. And the lake. And the boat. The boat was sinking. His thoughts were so sleepy.

Half-drunk werewolf? Fighting the Giant Squid? The hat chuckled.

Gryffindor.

Continued in Chapter 2.