The Bit after the Walrus
James!
Peter just fell halfway down the stairs! It was awesome, but he's really hurt and calling for help, so I'd better wrap this up fast. DRAGONS! DRAAAAAAAAAAGONS! Ha ha!
"Padfoot. This is literally the most useless piece of parchment in the world." James said through a mouthful of cereal. A pair of fourth-year girls opposite him at the Gryffindor table paused in their giggling long enough to shoot him a look of utter disgust. He gave a mighty swallow and looked around, surprised to see Remus next to him.
"He's not here yet mate, I've got him on walrus-shit duty, permanently." the sandy-haired boy stated matter-of-factly, and had a mouthful of tea.
"Good going. Where's Peter?"
"Dunno mate, he said something about the library. Probably forgot to do his Charms homework again."
"Aren't you his human homework-planner?" James gave him a puzzled glance before becoming invested in his cereal once more.
"Usually, Prongs, but he forgets so much that some of it's bound to slip through the cracks." Remus rubbed his eyes tiredly, and started piling sausages and bacon onto his plate. "Is that your random message from Sirius and Pete?"
"Yeah," James handed it to him, "Did you get yours yet?"
Remus scanned the note and smirked.
"Yeah, it was a cracker too, it just said 'Bollocks I've written the wrong note'. Didn't even have my name on it. The owl reached me back in the tower. Those owls are far too smart for their own good, I mean, how did they find me without my name?."
James grinned and scanned his timetable, that was pinned under his glass of pumpkin juice.
"Shit, double potions first. I just know I'll fall back to sleep in that humid bloody room." James yawned dejectedly, and Remus smiled.
"Oh well, just don't fall asleep in your cauldron, try for the desk instead."
"Yeah I'll give it a go. Besides, there are some consolations." James replied, eyes scanning the rest of his day. Double potions, free, DADA, free, then History of Magic and Transfiguration.
"Lily Evans is not going to go out with you mate. You'd do better putting your energies into thinking of a way for us to get rid of our new, gigantic, inconvenient pet." Remus pointed his fork sternly at him, and James swatted it aside with his own, scowling.
"Persistence, Remus, persistence!" he insisted, jabbing his own fork in Remus's direction.
"Ah, the stalker's motto! Is that from the handbook?" Remus laughed, and knocked aside James's fork.
At which point, they both had the same idea.
"Stalker? I demand that you back your words with your sword, sir!" James declared, standing. Remus followed suit.
"Gladly, sir. En garde!" Remus stepped over the bench, fork in hand, and James stepped out too, to the general amusement of the rest of the breakfasters, with the exception of the Slytherin table's scowls. Remus lunged, and James deftly parried, countering with a savage riposte that bit into Remus's sleeve.
"First blood to you, James, but I will have satisfaction!" Remus crowed, and lunged again. James stepped back, holding his left arm behind his back like a fencer, swept the fork-strike aside and gave ground as Remus came on. They battled to the end of the table, where James slipped in a tea-slick and lost his footing. Driving home his advantage, Remus attacked. James onto the bench again, between two startled first-years, who looked terrified. Cornered, Remus began to thrust and cut in earnest, scenting victory. James parried again and again, but he was tiring, and then...
"Oh for Merlin's sake will you stop pratting around!"
Both boys looked to their right, having thoroughly enjoyed themselves, still poised. The voice that had made them pause belonged to an irate-looking blonde sixth-year girl called Eleri DeMarco, Remus's current girlfriend, though James often thought of her more like his mother. She was short, nice-looking with a round, pleasant face, though right now, she was scolding.
"You look insane!"
"We aren't insane, love, we're just..."Remus trailed off, unable to think exactly what they 'just' were.
"Committed to the joke." James pitched in helpfully. Remus nodded, smiling broadly.
Eleri mumbled something about 'needing committing' while James picked himself up. Then she smiled broadly, and threw her arms around Remus's neck.
"I missed you!" she announced, "Did you miss me?"
"Every second love, you know that." Remus replied and drew her into an even tighter hug. She giggled happily.
"Oh give me strength." James muttered and returned to his breakfast.
"You're just jealous because you aren't getting any!" Remus shouted after him.
"Bullshit!" James returned, though internally he accepted that Remus was absolutely right. He stole Remus's tea the moment he sat down and counted it as a win, to offset this realisation.
Sirius emerged a few minutes later, about the same time as teachers began appearing at the head table. James noticed with faint interest that Dumbledore didn't appear to be there. He stole Remus's seat immediately.
"Remus with Eleri?" he asked, magicking the plate that Moony had left clean and beginning anew with a breakfast device all his own – The Heartinator.
He took a piece of fried bread and layered it with bacon, fried egg and sausage, added another slice of bread, and then stacked still more on top of that before rounding it off with a third and final piece of fried bread – thus creating a sandwich guaranteed to give you heart disease by the age of twenty-one.
"Heartinator this morning? Must have been a rough one." James said lightly.
"Have you ever cleaned up walrus-shit, James?"
"Can't say I have."
Sirius looked at him, his death-sandwich halfway to his mouth.
"Are you aware, James," he began, punctuating with a gesture of the Heartinator, "Of just how much a walrus is capable of shitting in one go?"
"I am in fact blissfully unaware of the exact quantity. I would imagine a fair bit?" James answered, hoping that the topic would change, and soon. He pushed his breakfast away and contented himself with drinking his swiped tea.
"Pray, James, that you remain blissfully unaware. And don't presume to know how my morning is going, in the meantime."
James laughed. Sirius in a bad mood was really more fun than it should be.
"You're pleasant today."
"And you're an arsehole."
James drew his wand surreptitiously and looked for Sirius's book-bag. It was beneath his seat.
"Diffindo." he whispered, and the Severing Charm did its work swiftly, opening the seam at the bottom of the bag. He stealthily pocketed his wand. Sirius, who was now engaged in a battle to the death with his sandwich, noticed nothing.
"Yes, I certainly am." he muttered with a grin, and began eating.
"What?" Sirius asked through a mouthful.
"I am an arsehole." James smiled and looked at him.
"O...kay then." Sirius, who had wolfed down his sandwich in record time, looked at him uncertainly, and got to his feet. "Coming to potions?"
"In a minute mate, there's something I've got to see first." James smiled serenely at him.
"You're weird today." Sirius said, suspiciously, and picked up his book bag, turning to go. He made it three metres. Three short metres.
The bag tore, as planned. Books scattered out everywhere, along with a number of other things – his cauldron, which rang chaotically, a couple of glass beakers that shattered, and the cherry on the cake, several extremely hazardous magical fireworks. Which went off, for like, no reason. Great fountains of blue, gold and red sparks shot off in every direction. The clustered and repeated detonations drowned out the worst of Sirius's barrage profanity. It was mostly directed at Prongs, though he never turned to face him at any point. By the time everyone had finished ducking, he had quite exhausted his rage, and was gasping for breath. James was gasping for breath too, but for quite a different reason.
Sirius turned slowly, and looked up at the head table, where a sleepy-looking McGonagall had her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, the very picture of a broken woman.
"Apologies, Prof..." he began, but she cut him off, pointing resolutely at the entrance to the Great Hall.
"Just...go." she answered, her voice hollow.
Sirius glared at James, who was recovering himself, and then about-faced and marched from the hall. James looked back towards where Remus would now be sitting. He was leaning over the table to look past a bemused Eleri. He winked and gave a brief thumbs-up, and James nodded, saying nothing – plausible deniability was everything in his newfound role. Abandoning the remains of his eventful breakfast, he got to his feet and pulled his own bag out from under the bench. He moved over to the debris that Sirius had left behind and repaired the beakers using magic. Then he stacked the books in the cauldron. He used a Featherweight Charm on it, and took it up in his right hand, grabbing the beakers with his left.
He caught up to Sirius outside the Potions dungeon. Everyone else had already gone inside, and he could hear them through the part-open door. Sirius smirked as he approached, his ill mood quite forgotten.
"Nice one mate, though my own predilection for fireworks did rather help you out. Sorry I snapped at you."
James waved his apology away and handed him his cauldron and his beakers. Padfoot pushed them back into his newly-repaired book-bag.
"Not at all mate, not at all. How's Slughorn looking?"
"Seems to be in a pretty jovial mood, might have an easy one this morning."
"Excellent."
They entered only a minute or so late, and went to an empty desk towards the back. James scanned the faces, his heart sinking. She wasn't there. He couldn't see her anyway.
Suddenly, she emerged from behind the neighbouring desk to the one he and Sirius were making for, where she had evidently been looking for something in her bag. He couldn't see her face yet, but he could have recognised the perfect shining curtain of titian hair that obscured it anywhere. As he watched, she flipped it back over her shoulder in an easy, practised movement. It caught the flickering torchlight for a moment and James lost his breath, enchanted. She didn't look at him, but he lost himself in the greenness of her eyes as she scanned the open page of Advanced Potion Making that sat before her. Her full, red lips mouthed something that was written on the page, and he felt a smile start at the corners of his mouth. He longed to brush her porcelain cheek with his fingertips, and as his smile spread he realised that he could see Sirius sat at their targeted desk, smirking.
In that moment, and to his utter horror, he realised that he had stopped moving and was openly staring at the object of his affection.
The smile sputtered and died as he slid sickeningly back into reality. People looked at him in total confusion from all around, except for the few who had seen where he was looking, who were openly snorting their derision. His cheeks colouring, he put his head down and rushed past Lily's desk, whom she was sharing with her friend Marian, and sat heavily next to Padfoot.
"You bastard, why didn't you nudge me or something? You know how I get around her!" he whispered furiously. Sirius sniggered.
"Yeah mate, but I owed you for this morning. Now we're even." his smirk widened at Prongs's distress.
"No it isn't! It's never even! Don't you get it? I did something cruel to you for snapping at me. We should have been even then! But now you felt you owed me for that, so you've done something back, and that means that later on I'll probably do something to you and it never ends! When we're fucking ninety we'll be smacking each other on the head with our walking sticks!" James frantically hissed, gesturing wildly with his arms and drawing even more attention.
"And besides! What do you mean even? Because of you we are in possession of a walrus, which I can only assume has to be contraband, though I doubt seriously that it's ever come up before. We could prank you continually for the next ten years and we wouldn't be even!"
Sirius paled as though that thought hadn't occurred to him, and looked away, reaching for his own potions book, while emptying the others from his cauldron. James pulled out his own copy, and saw Slughorn return from the ingredients cupboard. His jolly bulk could barely squeeze through the door, and his cheeks were red with the effort of remaining mobile. A cauldron simmered on his desk, a light fog exuding from it. The room was as stifling as normal, between the lit torches and the heat of the fire beneath his cauldron, and their heavy robes. As he began to speak, James wondered vaguely whether he was related to their sea-mammal friend, however distantly, and then he shot a look at Lily. He wondered for what had to be the thousandth time how she managed to make her school uniform so alluring. Those eyes that drew him in were focussed attentively on Slughorn, her arms crossed on the desk as she leaned forward.
"Well ladies and gentlemen today I thought we'd have a go at the Oblivious Unction, so please turn to page..."
The rest of his sentence was lost on James, who had much better things to pay attention to. His heart raged in his chest as she pushed a rebellious lock of hair behind the pale shell of her ear. She bit her lip in concentration and James's heart could have stopped.
The rest of the lesson melted away in this fashion. He was able to make a passable potion, which was good considering he looked at his cauldron perhaps twice. Sirius made his cauldron explode. Again. James was beginning to wonder if he wasn't doing it on purpose, but even if he was, his shrapnel-wounds were real enough and so he was excused to go to the hospital wing. Professor Slughorn vanished the mess.
Lily, of course, excelled and she flashed Sluggy a truly brilliant smile when he complimented her on it; James found himself wishing more than anything that just once she would smile like that at him. Before James knew it people were tidying away and filing from the classroom and as he emerged into the cool of the corridor, he dashed after Lily and Marian who were chatting animatedly.
"Evans!" he called, running a hand through his unruly hair, anxiety overtaking him.
She looked around, puzzled, but thankfully little remained of the old animosity he had found there. Since he and Sirius had calmed down, stopped picking on Snape, and generally cut back on their school-devastating bad behaviour, he had found she generally had more time for him than in the past, and that was just fine with James.
"Hey, Potter." she answered, giving him a slight smile, that, while it held none of the brilliance she bestowed upon those she found deserving, still made his breath catch in his throat. Marian rolled her eyes and smirked as the flustered boy drew level.
"How was your Christmas?" he asked, casting around for something witty to say and finding that part of his brain frozen and cowering.
"Interesting thanks. Met my sister's fiancé. As predicted, he is a dick, but if he cheers her up then he's aces with me. It'd be a change to see her...well...anything except mean, so..." she trailed off with a grimace and James chuckled.
"Real breath of fresh air is she? Sparkling personality?"
It was Lily's turn to laugh, and his stomach did a backflip.
"Yeah you could say that. How was yours? Any catastrophes?" she looked mischievous.
"One or two, you know. Whenever me and Sirius are within a kilometre of each other, trouble just sort of happens. We don't go looking for it, it just knows where we are."
She laughed again and he felt unsteady.
"I've noticed. Anything particularly crazy?" her voice was musical; it lilted in a way that he just couldn't find words to describe.
"We set Remus on fire," he admitted, and she looked at him in disbelief, "Really, we did, but Remus is fairly level-headed, so once he was done with the 'Oh shit I'm on fire' part of things, he leaped into the pond behind my house and we were like, 'situation resolved'."
"How do you manage these things?" Marian interrupted, and James grinned. Before he could respond, the victim of their pyromania jumped in. He had turned the corner ahead, and was closing on them.
"Suffice it to say, that James here, and Sirius especially, should never have received the gift of magic. Whatever greater being determines who gets magic and who doesn't, really dropped the ball."
James laughed at that, as did Marian.
"Also easy access to the drinks cabinet is a major factor." he added himself, and Remus shrugged.
"What have you two got now?" James asked, just to keep the conversation going.
"Charms." Marian said straight away, and pulled a face. "I hate Charms."
"Just because you're rubbish at them." Lily jibed, and Marian straightened up jocularly.
"I am not rubbish! I just choose not to perform because I don't like the subject."
"Yeah, whatever." Lily pushed, and Marian snorted.
Remus now punched James gently in the shoulder.
"You're needed mate. Where's Sirius?" he looked solemn, suddenly. The girls looked as though their interest had been piqued.
"Blew up his cauldron again. Bit of pewter got lodged in his cheek, some more in his hands. Pomfrey will have had him sorted by now though, he's probably dossing somewhere." James replied, getting serious too.
"What are you guys up to now?" Lily asked cautiously.
"Don't worry, Head Girl, nothing of school-shattering severity, just a minor bind Sirius and Peter dumped us in last night." James answered. Doubt was etched into every line of her face.
"Okay," she said grudgingly, "But you are being careful aren't you, Potter, because we've got a Prefect's meeting later, and you need to be there, not in detention, or suddenly devoid of your badge."
"Don't worry, Lily, I'll make sure he keeps the stupidity to a minimum." Remus clapped a hand on James's shoulder, and Lily dropped her worries.
"Okay, Remus, I trust you at least. Later, guys." she gave them a little wave as the girls continued on to their next lesson.
"James."
James remained unaware of Remus, just watched her leave instead.
"James!"
James was in a world all his own, a place that could only be called Lily-ville. Until Remus punched him in the shoulder again, only much harder. He still barely reacted.
"What?" he asked, dreamily.
"You're wearing that goofy smile again. Its horrifying."
"Sorry."
Sure enough, when they reached Gryffindor Tower, they found Sirius 'dossing' on the big sofa in front of the fire, his feet up, his wounds healed, and a bottle of butterbeer in his hand; the common room was otherwise entirely empty of students. He sighed as he raised it to his lips and swigged. As they entered through the tunnel that led to the portrait-hole, he twisted around to look at the door, almost slopping butterbeer everywhere.
"Mates-ho! How's it going? Good lesson, James?"
"Yeah, great." James answered hollowly. "Remus has been filling me in, and I reckon he's onto a pretty good plan."
"Plan?"
"Yeah, Padfoot. The Plan you made necessary when you demanded Wobbly provide you with a gargantuan sea-creature." Remus chipped in sardonically.
"Ah! A Plan! I'm with you." he wrenched his legs around and onto the floor and jumped to his feet in a way he obviously intended to seem 'ninja'. He dropped into a sort of martial-arts stance.
"Come on then lads, I'm ready for anything, lay it on me."
"Not that easy I'm afraid, Padfoot. Dormitory, if you please." Remus pointed, and Sirius obeyed, scampering up the stairs to the seventh-year dormitory, Remus and James close behind.
Their good friend the silenced walrus was now in the corner in a sort of den they had constructed for him out of sheets, and two chairs that provided support for a 'roof', which was just another blanket. It seemed happy enough, and let out a mammoth 'honk' that was entirely wasted.
"Hello, Domingo!" Sirius announced happily, prancing over to the walrus and, carefully avoiding the tusks, patting its head.
"Domingo?" Remus inquired, disbelieving, but he cut across Sirius when he opened his mouth to answer. "It doesn't matter."
Peter lay on his bed, reading a book with a gaudy cover entitled How To Pick Up Witches.
"Okay, everyone listen up!" Remus commanded like a drill sergeant. James sat heavily on his bed, the one closest to the door, and listened. Sirius continued fussing the walrus, and Peter set his book down on his chest.
"The answer came to me fairly swiftly today, and here it is: the Room of Requirement."
"Of course!" James put in, amazed they hadn't thought of it sooner.
"Exactly. Our problem lies in getting it there."
The others considered this.
"Wobbly said it took ten of them to get it here, but maybe a Featherweight Charm would get it there?" Peter mused, surprising everyone.
"Yeah, that could work. Make it light and just drag it there? Not a bad call Pete." Sirius congratulated him.
Remus nodded appreciatively.
"Does a Featherweight Charm work on people and animals?" James put in, wary.
"I assume so. Nobody's ever told us that it doesn't." Sirius answered.
"Move aside a moment, Sirius." Moony muttered, and as Padfoot did so, he performed the Charm.
"Now try and drag him." he continued.
Sirius did as he was told, and found the walrus was no lighter. He simply heaved at its flipper while it looked at him, mystified.
"Bugger. No luck. Good shout though, Pete." Sirius said, tilting his head. Wormtail shrugged, and went back to his book.
"In that case, we''ll have to levitate dear Domingo, which means it'll be all the more noticeable." Remus rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah, a flying walrus will definitely draw attention, so we should probably move it at night." said James.
"Yeah, we'll have to. This is going to be tricky, but I think we can probably do it tonight. Right after everyone goes to bed, we'll do it. Agreed?" Remus looked around the room. He received murmurs of assent.
"Right, that's sorted then." he stated, but he sounded less than convinced.
The rest of the day passed in a blur, all the marauders failing to pay attention to their lessons, instead thinking about how the Plan would go. For all four, DADA with Professor Tyburn (a tall, thin, dark-haired man whom Sirius swore blind was a vampire), which they ordinarily hugely enjoyed, merely disappeared, an hour of their lives they would never get back. This was true even for James, who was separated by two desks from where Lily was sitting, and so had no unbroken line of sight. The subsequent free period was spent in hurried discussion of the shortest route to the Room of Requirement. It was only a quick jaunt along the seventh floor corridor to where the Room appeared, but Remus's reasoning was that they should dodge and weave a bit, go through some other floors. They dismissed this in the end, reasoning that it just gave them more opportunity to get spotted. By the time they had agreed on a unanimous decision, the four were late for History of Magic, which in itself was not a problem, because Binns would likely never notice.
All the same, they pounded through the corridors in the direction of the classroom led by a James Potter gripped with a sense of urgency borne solely of respect for his teacher, something that was happening far too often recently for his liking. They took the main stairs, praying that they'd catch the staircases in a rare period of dormancy. Against all the odds, this seemed to be the case, and they reached the first floor in relatively short order. They turned a corner at the foot of the final flight, and, breathing hard, rushed on past empty classrooms in both walls. At the bottom, the corridor turned left, and they followed it. The History of Magic classroom, 4F, was just down and on the right, and as they burst through the door, Binns didn't even look up, but continued to drone on about the differences between the Wizard's Council and its modern-day successor the Wizengamot.
Sirius and Remus leapt at the only empty table. Peter, looking disgruntled, dropped in next to Robert Saxon, who moved over to accommodate him. That left one seat, a seat that James was hugely pleased with; because it was next to a certain redhead that was bowed over the desk scribbling notes furiously as he approached.
"Alright Evans?" he murmured, his cheeks colouring as she looked up at him, startled.
"Potter." she replied shortly as she returned to her note-taking, and James understood that now was not 'awkward chatting time' in her timetable. Instead, he pulled out his books and parchment and began to scratch notes of his own, interspersed with pointless doodles. He kept this up for a good ten minutes, a good effort as far as he was concerned in one of Binns's lessons. His mind wandered as he stared straight at a point on his parchment. He idly scratched his parchment with his quill to make it look as though he was doing something, a token ruse that had never failed before; in his head, he was on the shore of the lake closest to the castle, sitting with his back against a broad, gnarled old tree, and Lily was there, laughing with him, leaning into him with his arm around her shoulders. It was a pleasant daydream, and one he was often the willing victim of.
It was slow going but the minutes steadily crawled by, and before he knew it, Binns seemed to be wrapping up. He jolted back to reality and looked blearily around, yawning. Peter was openly snoring, face-down on the desk. Saxon was fighting to control fits of laughter. Sirius was fixated on the back wall, and even Remus next to him had lost all his prodigious diligence in the face of Binns's unremitting fact-assault. The other students in the class all were in similar catatonic states, except for, he noticed with mild confusion, Lily, who was looking embarrassedly down at his own parchment. She saw him looking and immediately cast her eyes down at her own notes, blushing.
James looked down, and saw that the right-hand edge of his roll of parchment was sparsely covered in things he hadn't realised he'd been scrawling.
All of them consisted of two characters. He felt ill.
'L.E.'.
He had been absent-mindedly drawing her initials and worse, she had realised it.
He felt himself blush too, more fiercely even than Lily. He hurriedly scraped his paper off the desk and pushed it haphazardly into his bag, and others seemed to take this as the cue for packing away themselves.
"Oh!" Binns exclaimed, as though mildly surprised to see them, "Yes, I suppose you can go..."
There was a rush of movement, and Lily didn't look at him the whole time she was replacing her books in her bag.
"Hey, Lily, you finished for the day?" he asked, trying to act as though nothing had happened.
"Oh yeah, you?" she replied in a strange, hearty tone.
"Yeah...I mean no! Transfiguration, yet." James cursed his stupidity.
She muttered something like 'see you later', and then rushed out of the classroom. Remus and Peter were done too, and headed back to the dormitory to start preparations, so as he and Sirius both made their way to Transfiguration with their long-suffering head of house, he imparted his humiliating episode to his friend with the air of someone who felt he thoroughly deserved a ribbing. To his surprise, however, Padfoot had his 'sympathetic' head on, and clapped him on the shoulder as they walked. This close to the end of the day, their book-bags seemed ten times heavier, their exuberance giving way to intensely not giving a toss about the next lesson.
"Bad luck Prongs mate. Don't know why she's so embarrassed though, personally; you've been asking her out pretty much solidly since our fourth year."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that, too." James had rarely been so confused. He had never made his affection unclear. Now he wondered if it had always been his sincerity that she found wanting. The thought didn't give him a good feeling. Had he really been his own worst enemy?
He had never been good with sincere, or vulnerable. It was a trait he and Sirius shared, and it was one of the things that bonded them – there had even been times, after a few Firewhiskies, that they had talked openly about things he would never have spoken about to anyone else. It was as though their issues with appearing vulnerable made them kindred spirits – as though they could be completely truthful with each other, while presenting a united front to the rest of the world. He had often disclosed to Sirius the strength of his feelings for Lily, and somehow only now did it occur to him that it might appear from the outside as something entirely different.
Now he saw that it hadn't just been his immaturity, his unreliability, his disregard for the rules – it was his own flawed outlook.
His heart sunk to the bottom of his chest. He was about to voice this, an unprecedented move when not fuelled by Firewhiskey, even between him and Sirius, but then the classroom was upon them, and McGonagall was admonishing them for something or other, and for an hour they practised Conjuring, the art of 'Transfiguring' something from nothing at all. The classroom erupted with bursts of blue fire, exact duplicates of people's desks and book-bags, and bunches of colourful flowers.
By the time it was all over, James had a leek hanging from one ear, and Sirius was covered in what looked like confetti. Woefully, Professor McGonagall magicked the leek away, and sheepishly they left.
Their earlier topic forgotten for the moment, they hurried back to the Gryffindor common room where they found that it was still busy. Peter stood at the back, eyeing everyone shiftily. They made straight for him, and he smiled and waved.
"Alright lads? Just waiting until everyone clears out. Remus is in the dorm with Castor and Martin."
"Exploding snap?" Sirius asked him, and Pete nodded eagerly. The two sat at a small, round table in the corner and began their game while James took the stairs two at a time and entered the seventh-year dormitory, chucking his book-bag on his bed. The walrus gave a loud honk and made him jump immediately. Martin laughed.
"Sorry James, we lifted Remus's spell earlier, we thought it was cruel to leave him silent any longer." he said, and continued with the essay he was writing, the parchment leaning on the solid cover of a large book.
"Probably a good call, I didn't even think about it." James couldn't deny that 'Domingo' as Sirius had dubbed him, definitely seemed happier.
"How's the common room looking?" Remus asked absent-mindedly as he fed the walrus some fish scraps he had fetched from the kitchens. They all knew they didn't have to hide the beast from the Gryffindors, at least not the boys – the girls had not seen it yet, and the fewer people knew the better. They were using their own common room as an indicator as to how many other students would be up throughout the school.
"Packed mate. However, if we skip dinner, then we can get grub from the kitchens later, and the school should be nice and clear – plus if we do get caught, punishment will be correspondingly less severe."
Remus mulled it over for a second.
"Yeah, nice one, I like the sound of that. You've got to tell Sirius we're missing dinner though." he grinned broadly.
"Remind me to have my wand handy." James joked back.
Dinner rolled around in no time, and after Sirius had cleared up a final flurry of walrus leavings, as they were now politely known, Remus, James and Peter levitated the creature.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" they cried in unison and, looking as though it was enjoying itself immensely, the beast floated into the air. Martin and Castor remained behind, insisting that in this venture, the Marauders were on their own. Sirius led the way, the 'pointman' as he put it; he also felt he was more suitable for this role because he was, quote, 'Totally ninja'.
"Okay lads, easy does it!" James said quietly, and they began to descend the staircase to the common room, James leading behind Sirius, as they eased the Walrus around the corners. Sirius was already exaggeratedly sneaking through the common room below, towards the portrait-hole. The room was empty, and so he slid over tables and vaulted chairs completely unnecessarily. As they crossed the room, they grew in confidence, and so increased their pace.
Sirius opened the portrait-hole and leapt through dramatically, his head turning left and right.
"All clear, hurry up." he said, then forward-rolled a metre or two down the corridor, springing up like something from a bad spy movie.
They manoeuvred Domingo lower, and through the narrow passage behind the Fat Lady. As they emerged, they heard a shocked gasp from their right, and, jumping, startled, they all turned to look to their right.
And saw Lily and Marian, joined by their friends Wendy and Jessica, standing stock-still and staring at the strange scene before them.