A/N: Written for The 2012 Hogwarts Games (event: swimming- backstroke 100 – 1000 words), which can be found in the HPFC forum. From there I also got the prompt "We're almost there," which I tweaked slightly.

Thanks to my beta-reader mew-tsubaki.

How Not to Begin Sixth Year

"Do you remember our first ride to Hogwarts?" Remus asks, his eyes caught somewhere far off.

"Yes! I do!" Sirius cries out from the floor where he's rolling around battling Peter for a pumpkin pastry. "We were ickle and—" He's interrupted when he has to spit some of Peter's hair out. "Ew, you taste gross, Petey. Didn't you bathe during the entire summer?"

"I did," Peter answers in the middle of a groan, as he receives a pointy elbow in his stomach. "And what do you mean—does my hair usually taste differently?"

James, who had been busy heaving his trunk on the top shelf, plops down on the seat and tugs at a lock of Peter's hair. "Can I taste, too?"

Peter rolls his eyes, but as he's squirming an awful lot thanks to Sirius licking his neck to make him release the pastry, the only response is a "Gedoff me, Pads, get off me!" James takes the opportunity and chews a bit on Peter's hair.

"I wouldn't say he taste gross, per se," James says to Remus, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "He tastes hairy, in my opinion."

Remus nods, still staring out the window. "We knew nothing back then, did we?" he asks, a smile playing on his lips.

"Hey, are you being sentimental, Moony?" Sirius asks, panting loudly and cradling the pastry closely to his heart. Peter, on the other hand, is lying dejectedly on the floor, face down with a sour look on his face, and mumbling about how Sirius should buy his own pastries and not steal it from famine-stricken, defenseless children. "We're only starting our sixth year; I won't allow this sappiness until approximately the last two weeks of our seventh year."

"I actually agree there," James says solemnly. His lower lip trembles a little as he continues, "Because there's only…only two years left of this, and then… Then it's all over!" His glasses have begun to fog up.

"Oh, come on, Prongs!" Sirius punches James in the arm, which causes Sirius to receive a very indignant—yet tearful—look from the bespectacled boy. "What's wrong with you two?" he says, pointing at Remus and James.

"They haven't eaten properly today," Peter says from the floor, where he now has taken to carefully picking the lock on Remus' trunk in the hopes of finding something edible. "Too excited, I assume," he finishes, triumphantly pulling a sock out of the trunk, then looking disappointedly at it and throwing it at Sirius' face.

Sirius, dodging it skillfully, frowns in the direction of James and Remus, who now have locked eyes and seem to be doing some kind of "if you cry, I cry, man" game, where it's not clear whether they're trying to avoid bursting into tears or not, and says loudly, "This is so weird."

"I know, right?" Peter says. "Want a sandwich?"

"Oh, yes!" Sirius brightens up and starts to munch happily on the sandwich Peter hands him.

"This is just like first year," James says shakily. "You remember how Peter and Sirius bonded over Chocolate frogs?" he asks Remus, sniffing.

"Yes," Remus answers urgently. "And you bragged about your collection of Chocolate Frog cards for ages, and Petey was so jealous that he started to hiccup."

"And you sat munching on your sandwich in the corner, so quiet Sirius had to jump into your lap to learn your name," James fills in excitedly.

Sirius' eyes have been jumping between the two of them for the entire conversation, mouth slightly open. "You aren't gonna finish that one, Pads?" Peter asks, indicating the forgotten sandwich on which Sirius has a loose grip.

Sirius pops it into his mouth promptly and says with glinting eyes, "Shooh am, Woomi."

Peter wrinkles his nose in disgust. "All right, you don't have to show it to me how it's too late in that great detail, thanks."

As Sirius has finished swallowing, he nods his head in the direction of the other two boys, who still are counting off memories, faster and faster, and with faces going redder and redder. "What are we gonna do with those two? I won't enter the Great Hall with them sobbing their hearts out."

"Me neither," Peter says, eyes widening. "The Slytherins will laugh their arses off!"

When James suddenly lets his tale of their first detention together end in a long wail and a dive into Remus' arms, nose burrowing itself into the neck of the sandy-haired boy, Peter's and Sirius' eyes meet in horror. "And we're almost there, now."