"What is it, exactly, that flocks those girls to them?" Lily Evans said stubbornly, nearly ripping the pages from her book while she turned them. Her ears were turning redder by the second and it was then it became apparent to Kristina Deschanel that her moody friend was in distress.
"It's not them as a whole, they have the unfortunate little fat one tripping behind them." She pointed out with a smirk, waving her wand around a tad. While the group of boys in question liked to flaunt their "stuff" around Kristina and Lily preferred to keep their noses in their own business along with one other person to their crew; Severus Snape.
"Kristina, please," Lily started in a huff, "Peter is picked on enough by those...monsters, I don't think he needs—"
"Lily, they're not monsters," Kristina laughed, "the bloke's just tragically unfortunate." Kristina let her focus settle on the group of boys, throwing a quaffle back and forth to each other. Those four were practically inseparable, in a completely unhealthy way.
There was James Potter, Lily's little discretion. He was sort of the ring leader of the group; he was the mastermind behind all the torturing of first years and Severus. After all their years at Hogwarts, James felt absolutely compelled to keep on Severus's tail, not giving him a moment to breathe. Then there was Remus Lupin, without a doubt the most intelligent in the group, probably the most level headed and kindest. Remus had made himself familiar to Kristina on several occasions by eating breakfast with her at the Slytherin table, always having wonderful stories he brought back from his summer vacations to France or Rome, one time even New York City. Sirius Black was James's right hand, they were attached at the hip, conjoined practically by umbilical cord. Sirius, for lack of a better term to Kristina, a complete prat. He was totally hot headed and got a real kick out of it, making it much worse than it needed to be. Finally, poor, poor Peter Pettigrew. He was nearly impossible to put into a full sentence, 'pathetic git' was as far as anyone could reach. A nice boy, everyone was sure, but just too willing to be James's "bitch" that he couldn't really define his own personality and reputation.
"Have you two even GLIMPSED at the prophet yet?" came an out of breath voice from Severus from behind the two girls. He threw himself down onto the ground and conveniently had two copies of the paper to give each of them.
"THE DARK LORD SIGHTED" screamed the big bold and antique lettering on top of the prophet. Kristina rolled her eyes and threw the paper to the side.
"I haven't the faintest why you don't take this seriously, Kristina, the Dark Lord is returning and you can not deny it any longer" Severus said sounding beyond offended.
"What I don't understand is where the bloody hell he went away to in the first place. The man's a has-been—" she continued despite the look of horror on Severus's face "—if he was planning on coming back and offing anybody I think he would have done it by now."
Kristina was all too used to Severus being all over the place trying to track Voldemort's steps. Slytherin, granted, but obsessed.
"The Dark Lord?" Came James Potter's mock surprised tone approaching the tree the trio were sitting under. After him followed his skeptical posse, aside from Sirius of course. Remus shyly waved at Kristina who returned greetings with a smile.
"Gone off and tried to track down your boyfriend again, Snivellus?" James teased snatching Severus's prophet from his hands. Severus made a pretty pathetic attempt at trying to get it back and just slumped down near the grass. James scanned over the article several times and snorted.
"This is a load of rubbish, you know, the Dark Lord isn't coming back, especially to savior the Slytherins." James threw the paper back down. He had the same attitude as Kristina, and the same fear as well. What if he was coming back? Remus was still looking at Kristina and they locked eyes for a second. Kristina pushed herself up off the ground and brushed her bum off.
"I'll see you two in Potions." She said quickly and started to speed-walk away, grabbing Remus's arm to drag him with her. They went nearly to the Whomping Willow when Kristina finally stopped jogging and fell down onto the grass, warmed by the beating sun. Remus panted and sat next down next to her, criss-crossing his legs. He pushed a little of his mousey brown hair from his face and sighed.
"You know, James reckons he really is back." He said in his usual quiet, timid voice. Kristina closed her eyes and let her eyelids burn from the same sun heating the grass.
"I had a dream about it third year," Kristina quietly admitted, Remus's ears perked in a canine-like way. "I dusted it off for a while, most of them come true, you know, but this one seemed a little…"
"Out there?" Remus offered and Kristina nodded, "Listen, Krissy, you need to tell Dumbledore, warn him."
"Remus, I highly doubt that Dumbledore is going to believe a 17 year old girl has future predicting dreams." She said sounding disappointed in herself.
"Krissy, you seem to forget on countless occasions that you're a witch."
"With an O in Divination…" she added and they both laughed a little.