Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything relating to JKRowling.
Summary: When Harlow Essery transfers to Hogwarts, she doesn't just bring the baggage of a scared past, but also two books that will change the future. The Marauders read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone while Harlow & Lily's friends read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. How will these students react to the accounts of a boy in his first and third year?
Note: Please review! Tell me what you think of the characters, or the writing style or if there are any errors in my work (including discontinuity). I'm really looking for advice on how to improve my writing.
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Chapter Two: The Finding of Future Books
James and Remus had told him to be patient, to let Sleeping Beauty come to them instead of trying to chase after her and pin her down for an interrogation. But it's soooo hard! It had almost been a month since the start of school, since the day she had punched him for trying to tickle her awake, and yet he felt like he learned nothing more about her then what he had been able to flirt Madame Lycos out of. He knew she was alone in the world, and yet she didn't act like it. Not that she lied when people asked her questions about her family, but she just seemed to slide out of the question without having answered it and without the questioner realizing until she had already left the room. No one in the school knew anything about her. He wasn't even sure Lily, who she had most classes with, or Athena, who she lived with, knew why she had been transferred to Hogwarts in the first place. To top off his aggravation, he had this feeling that she was avoiding him. Well, you did try to tickle her awake, Sirius conscious blurted out.
"Sirius, will you please stop brooding." James had been trying to concentrate on his potions essay that was due tomorrow morning, but it was proving difficult when his best friend was glaring at him from the other side of the table. James knew that Sirius wasn't actually glaring at him, in fact, he was sure that Sirius had forgotten where he was let alone who was in front of him. Harlow Essery had been on his mind as well, but James didn't think anyone spent as much time thinking about her as Sirius was doing now.
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Lily and Athena had told her to be patient, to let Harlow come to us instead of trying to chase after her and pin her down for an interrogation. But it's soooo hard! It had almost a month since the start of school, and since first being introduced to Harlow Essery, and yet it seemed like no one knew anything about her. Marigold was dying to ask her question her, but every time she tried Harlow would find a legitimate excuse for why she had to leave and then Athena and Lily would sigh and ask Marigold why she couldn't just leave the girl alone.
Marigold didn't understand it. Athena lived with her and Lily had a lot of classes with her and yet neither of them knew anything deeper about her than that her middle name was Delphine and her favorite color was either hoary and slate, which Marigold had to look up to find out that they were different shades of grey. Athena had pointed out that while Marigold was an open book to basically anyone, the same could not be said of everyone else, but Marigold knew that even she was a little frustrated at the lack of information Harlow had revealed about herself. It's like she doesn't want anyone to know her, Marigold thought as she tried to not glare at Harlow, who was sitting in front of her working on a potions essay for tomorrow morning. She can't be completely oblivious to what we are all thinking though. I mean it isn't exactly natural to go almost a whole month without laughing, right?
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Harlow bit back a sigh as she tried to ignore the stares she was getting in the library. You'd think that the school didn't have more important things to do than to stare at me. She had just made her excuses to Lily, Athena and Marigold about leaving something in the room that she had to go get. She just couldn't work under the piercing look of Marigold anymore. At first she thought it would go away, but as the days in the last could of weeks past, the look had gotten more determined and harder to ignore. Harlow wasn't an idiot after all, she knew that they were all curious about her, but it was hard for her to let information go, and she didn't understand why they were son interested in her life. She was pretty sure that Lily and Athena had talked to Marigold about interrogating her when they were studying together, but even though they hid it better, Lily and Athena both had a tendency to become distracted from their work and peer at her with a look that showed they were holding back the questions on the tip of their tongues.
It wasn't just them either. Sirius Black had introduced her to his friends James and Remus and they were just as curious as Marigold. It was a good thing that Harlow wasn't in the same house as Sirius or she'd never get a break from him. He was nice, really very nice but it was almost impossible to avoid his questions. He just dogged a person until they answered them in detail. She'd taken to trying to avoid him in order to avoid his questions, which was a shame because he was wickedly funny when he wasn't interrogating her. This was no easy feat either, he seemed to just popup everywhere she went like he had a tracking device on her.
"Harry!" Speaking of the devil. Harlow had no choice but to turn around and face Sirius at the sound of his nickname for her. She hadn't argued the name, although she thought about it, afraid that it would encourage him to talk directly to her. "I was just looking for you."
"Well you found me." Now the question is how am I going to lose you without being rude? "What did you need?"
"Company, what else?" Great he's going to try to interrogate me again.
"I'm actually headed to my common room. I left a book there that I need to finish the last of my Ancient Studies homework." Sirius' smile didn't fade, but Harlow could feel a dimming around him as if she had just rejected him, Which I sort of was trying to do. "Do you want to walk with me to the common room though?" What? What is wrong with me? Why did I ask that? The dimming reversed and Harlow had the strangest feeling of being warmed before she shook it off.
"I'd like that."
"Great." Not great. Not great at all!
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"That's great, mate."
"See, we told you that if you gave her space that she would eventually come to you."
"I thought that only worked when you were dating the girl."
"No, Wormy, this is one of the tactics that always works no matter what the relationship is."
"So, did you find out anything new about her, Padfoot?"
"Yah! I learned that…no, I already knew that. But I learned..."
"Padfoot?"
"…I learned nothing, Moony. Nothing that I didn't already know. Which was nothing. Bloody Hell!"
"Wow, she got you good this time, Padfoot."
"You're not helping, Peter."
"I'm just point out the‒"
"The obvious? Thanks for that."
"Oh come on, Sirius. If you just give her‒"
"What, Moony? Time? Space? How much? When do I get the flashing light that says it's okay to ask questions now?"
"Well, I don't know about the flashing light, but I think Remus is right. I mean look at what waiting has gotten you so far?"
"Remind me again."
"It's gotten her attention. It's gotten her to offer to spend time with you. Even if it's only a short amount of time."
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"That's great, James!"
"I know, but it was the devil trying to convince Sirius that it was progress."
"He's like Marigold, then." And you if you remember correctly. "They both want immediate answers to all of their questions."
"Basically. I used to think that the two of them would make a good couple. But after she joined the team I'd have to say that one Sirius is enough in any relationship."
"I used to think that too, but you've got a point about one Sirius per relationship. But Athena told me that they did date for awhile."
"Really? When did that happen?"
"I don't know. Awhile ago, but she never said anything to me about it. Of course, it's kind of hard to keep up with all of her dates."
"Same with Sirius. Right so back on the topic of Hogsmead weekend? I was thinking we could do one for Halloween like they did last year. I know it might be a pain to clean up all the mess from Zonkos products‒"
"Are you planning on helping to create that mess again this year?"
"What's Hallows Eve without a little mayhem?"
"I don't think I can answer that without coming off hypocritical. I was thinking we could talk to Professor Dumbledore about authorizing a Hallows Eve party like they did two years ago. What do you think?"
"Hmm, I don't know. On one hand the costumes are always fun, but it might be a stretch on everyone's pockets right now. I'd rather push a dance off till the week before Christmas."
"That's when everyone will be wanting to hold their money for presents."
"Right, well how about in November? Nothing happens in November."
"Well there's Guy Fawkes and the Harvest Fair."
"Why don't we do that? I haven't been to a Harvest Fair Ball."
"Plus, it would give everyone more chances to go to Hogsmead. Once for Halloween, once in November, and once before Christmas. We can figure out more dates before we leave for break."
"Alright, let's draw up a proposal this week that way we have a ready copy for Professor Dumbledore in plenty of time."
"Right…Hey, Lily?"
"Yah, James?"
"Has Harlow ever invited you or Athena or Marigold to do anything?"
"You mean like walking her to the common room? No."
"Have you noticed how she evades everyone's question?"
"It's hard not to once it's happened to you repeatedly. Why?"
"You don't think something happened to her to make her that way, do you? I mean, something bad?"
"I don't know, James. And until she tells me, I don't have any way of finding out."
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I thought it was a dream. I thought it was a nightmare. Harlow stared down at the book that had fallen out of her bag. She'd put a spell on the bag so that an infinite amount of belongings would fit in the bag without it getting any bigger, but she hadn't gotten around to emptying the bag until now. That's how she found the book. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Her last headmistress had gotten this and another book for her to read on the journey "home". When she had gotten the letter from Hogwarts, she thought it was a joke. It had to be, except it talked about things that couldn't be. That couldn't be known. It talked about the war. It talked about teachers who were at the school. It talked about James and Lily dying. The conversations she had heard on the train came back a little. She had thought it was a dream that the book was projecting. When she had woken up, she had decided that she had dreamed about the books too. That it was just a nightmare. What do I do?
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Where did this come from? Remus was sitting on his bed looking at the cover of a book he had never seen before. It had been inside his suitcase, but when he'd emptied the luggage out the first night, he hadn't paid attention to it. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Remus thought that it was a prank by James, but…No, James wouldn't make a prank like this. It would take too much time and not a big enough bash for him to consider it a successful prank. Remus sighed and tossed it back into his trunk. He'd ask James about it later, right now he needed to get ready for the full moon.
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Monday had long past, along with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In those four days her classmates had seen a definitely change in Harlow. Several definite changes actually, as she kept swerving from one mood to another by day. Tuesday she looked like she was in a lost daze, late to every class, jolting at sudden noises, abnormally quiet (even by her standards) and completely unfocused. When classes had come to an end, she went straight to her room and went to bed flat out ignoring the questions and concerned looks her classmates were giving her. Wednesday she acted like Tuesday had never happened and, other than evading the question of what had happened to her yesterday, she answered questions put to her in straight forward fashion. She didn't go to sleep until late because she asked Athena to eat smores with her in the common room. The Thursday came, and she was more evasive than anyone had ever seen her. The most anyone was able to get out of her was a "hello" and "goodbye" and even the Marauders couldn't find her in the castle. (Partially because Peter had misplaced the map.) Friday was similar to Thursday, except she bounced from one class to another either with a smile on her face or biting her bottom lip nervously.
Today was Saturday, and to Athena's shock when she woke up, Harlow wasn't there. One of their other roommates had tried to wake her up in the first week of classes, and, after apologizing profusely for not warning them ahead of time, explained that she always woke up with her left fist swinging and that she absolutely hated mornings. Athena, on the other hand, was a morning person to the core; when the sun can up so did she. Not seeing Harlow in her bed at dawn ignited a brief panic in Athena that she might not have had had Harlow been less than unpredictable during the week. She throws on clothes and rushes out to the common room to find it empty. "Damn it, Harlow."
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The piece of paper beside Lily's bed was an invention made by Athena and herself after Lily had seen a howler for the first time. Since electronic equipment wouldn't work inside the school, Lily and Athena had found a way to use the piece of paper to communicate and took the howler as a basis. It was by this invention that Lily was woken up. "LILY! WAKE UP!"
Lily groaned angrily from the floor where she had fallen, which must have been heard on the otherside because Athena responded. "Sorry, but I needed you to wake up right away and get Marigold and come help me."
"Why? What happened? What's wrong?"
"It's Harlow. I can't find her."
"But it's barely light out. Isn't she in bed?"
"If she was in bed, would I be waking you up now? Look I wouldn't normally worry, but she's been weird all week."
"Alright, I'll go ask the Marauders if they know where she is.
"Thanks, I'm going to go down to the kitchens and the Great Hall to see if she's there."
"And I'll send Marigold down after I've talked to the Marauders."
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"James?"
"Mmm."
"James, please wake up."
"Mmmmm."
"James, it's Lily. I need you to wake up."
"Lily-flower. Dream. Mmm."
"…Right I really hate to do this but. WAKE UP!"
"Ahh!"
"Wha-What? What? Where?"
"I'm sorry."
"Lily?"
"What the hell, flower?"
"What's going on?"
"Who screamed?"
"I need the map, James."
"Wha-What?"
"You woke us up because‒"
"You need the map?"
"It's dawn, flower…"
"I realize it's dawn, James, otherwise I would take issue with you calling me 'flower' but I need the map."
"How do you even‒"
"You know what, after we find Harlow, I will answer your questions."
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"Marigold, go down to the Great Hall to tell Athena that the Marauders don't know where she is."
"Where are you going?"
"The library and the hospital wing."
"But if the Marauders don't know‒"
"I know, but I've got to check anyways."
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"Sirius and I will cover Hogsmead."
"Do you think she's already found the passages?"
"Well, she isn't on the map, where else could she be?"
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"I'm going to kill her when I find her. I'm going to shred her in half with a blunt saw, and then I'm going to‒"
"Marigold, not that I don't understand the sentiment but the planning the process is taking it a step too far."
"You guys! I just ran into Remus, he said he found her. She's in the transfiguration classroom."
"Are you kidding me? We've been looking for her all day and she's been in a classroom?"
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Alright, well, that's the last of the enchantments. I hope I covered everything. Let's see, I have something to forget temporary and permanently, plus the watch stop, I put the book in the room of requirements, don't know what I would have done without it. I think that is it. There's no going back now. I've got to tell them about the books. Or at least Lily about the books. Wish I could figure out where the other book was though. I mean, I didn't dream that. I wonder if it got mixed up in someone else's‒but how could that have happened? Harlow sighed wearily staring down at her checklist for tomorrow, she'd been working on it since she'd found the books, which would have been a lot easier had she been able to visit the librarian at her old school earlier in the week. She knew that she should be grateful that Professor Dumbledore let her use his fireplace at all, and she would be had she not be so nervous about what she was planning to do with the books. She hoped that Lily would react to them well. She probably will, I mean I've never actually seen her get upset and she's usually in a good or mild temper.
"HARLOW DELPHINE ESSERY!"
Harlow couldn't help but jump up from her seat at the sound of her full name being screamed so loud it bounced off of the walls. The question of whether she had jumped at hearing her full name said for the first time or the volume of it being said passed briefly in her mind. It didn't matter because she instantly froze when she saw a red-faced red head who seemed to be on the brink of accidental magic. "Li-Lily?" Harlow asked in a small voice wondering what the hell she could have done to provoke the storming temper.
"How. Dare. You." Lily entered the room and each step forward pushed Harlow one step back. "Have you any idea what you have done?" It was on the tip of Harlow's tongue to say no, but she was too scared to say something that would cause an explosion. "Have you any idea the hell you put us through?"
"Wh-What?"
"We've been looking for you all day. No one knew where you were. Bed empty, no note. Where the hell have you been? We were scared something had happened to you."
"Sorry?" By this point Lily was only a foot away and Harlow's back was to the wall.
"Sorry?…That's it? That's all you have to say."
"What do you want me to say?" I'll tell you anything you want hear so long as you don't hex me.
"Oh, I don't know, why don't you tell us where exactly you've been all day and why exactly you thought it necessary to worry us to death." The accusation that she had a responsibility to tell them her every move stung Harlow enough to pull her out of her surprised and somewhat fearful state. It bloody well isn't my fault if they are going to worry about me. I didn't ask them to!
"As to where I was exactly. I was in the library, in North Carolina, at my old school, talking to the librarian. For a specific reason." That has everything to do with you. "As to why, exactly, I thought it necessary to worry you so, well I have no control over you're worry mechanisms. How was I supposed to know you would get so upset?"
"How could you possibly think we wouldn't worry about you? We are your friends, and the concept of caring about the endangerment of one friend calling for the panic and worry by the others cannot be completely foreign to you." Harlow just blinked at Lily's response, because it was a completely foreign concept to her. "Besides you've been like a rollercoaster all week. One minute up the next down then all of a sudden you are gone before the sun has even risen, Miss I-Hate-Mornings. What were we suppose to think?"
"I have a reason for that."
"One that you refuse to share with your friends."
"Will you stop that!"
"Stop what?"
"Throwing around the word friend like it's a contract that I signed onto and repeatedly act against. Look I'm sorry that I worried you, but I don't understand why you care so much about me." For that matter, I don't even understand why I care so much about you either.
"What the hell do you mean you don't understand? It's because we are friends. It's absolutely impossible for you not understand that."
"It's actually not absolutely impossible that I don't understand, otherwise I wouldn't have said that I don't understand in the first place."
"Have you never had a friend before?"
"Honestly? No. No I have not. Which is why I do not understand what you are so upset about. I'm fine and you found me and I apologized for scaring you even if I didn't do it on purpose and personally don't think I deserve being yelled at for it."
"You've never had a friend?"
"I believe I just said that, and I don't typically lie."
"I didn't say you lied. You needn't resort to lying, you're so proficient in evasion and redirecting conversations."
"And you're point is?"
"My point is that No One Knows Anything About You."
"And?"
"And that's bad."
"How is that bad?"
"People want to know you."
"Why?"
"Because they do."
"Why?"
"Because they want to be your friend!"
"Why?"
"Why the hell are you arguing with me why people want to be friends with you?"
"I'm trying to figure out why you want to be friends with someone you just professed to not know when the likelihood of us seeing each other again, taking my awful luck in remaining in one place for more than a year, is extremely small."
"What?"
"Hogwarts isn't the first school I've transferred to, Lily. This is the seventh school I've attended. True, this time it's not because I've been bumped from one of my father's siblings to another, as all of them are dead now. Yet the concept of moving me across time zones did not end when that last of my relatives, all of whom have hated me since, well they never actually told me when they started to hate me, anyways the practice of moving me across time zones did not decease with them. That is why I'm at Hogwarts. They are why I don't have friends. What's the point if in less than a year, because the school year isn't twelve months long, now is it, I'm just going to get moved again. And I've never seen or heard from any of the people I've gone to school with at any of the other schools I attended. Not even the one that I was actually lucky enough to stay two years at."
"Wh‒What?"
"I just told you my part of my sad life story, just like you wanted. Happy now?"
"You‒What?"
"Are you done yelling at me?"
"I‒Yes? Wait. You're an‒"
"Orphan. The word is orphan, but don't worry I haven't really been anything other than an orphan since I was four. Other than my grandfather, who I lived with until I was seven, I've only seen my other relatives five times. Not in a year, but in seventeen. Even when I was transferred into another's hand I never actually got to see them. They don't like half-breeds."
"I‒" Lily's voice was caught in her throat, and Harlow shook her head angry at herself and at the sympathy that was clouding over the anger that had been in Lily's eyes. I don't want you're sympathy.
"I'm going to bed." Harlow noticed the others (Sirius, Remus, James, Athena, and Marigold) when she walked around Lily in order to get out of the door, but she didn't look at them and she tried to keep the stress out of her arms. I shouldn't have said anything. I should have kept my head. Damn book made me lose it. How am I going to tell Lily about the book now?
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"She‒"
"Seven schools?"
"Well, that explains why she adapted to the teaching so easily. She's had to adapt before."
"I can't believe she all alone."
"I can't believe she's never had a friend."
"So what do we do?"
"Wait for her to come to us again?"
"Maybe we should apologize."
"No, if you apologize it's only going to piss her off."
"Sirius is right."
"But we can't go back to the way things were before."
"Maybe we should just play tomorrow by ear. Let her take the lead?"
"Yah, I guess."
"You know, there's something I don't understand still."
"What that, Remus?"
"Why did she have to go to the library at her last school?"
"I don't know, but it must have been a pretty important reason. Professor Dumbledore wouldn't let her go without one."
"Think she'll tell us?"
"I don't know, that explosion was kind of uncharacteristic or her."
"I hope everything is okay."
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The next morning, even Athena didn't want to get out of bed. She had a mountain of work to do since she had wasted all of Saturday looking for Harlow, but she had had a hard time sleeping in the bed next to Harlow that night. What must it be like to never have had a friend? Lonely? Scary? But Harlow seems so relaxed. Most of the time.
"Hey, Athena." Harlow pulled back the curtains on her bed hesitantly. "You should get up now. There's something I think you, Marigold and Lily are going to want to see."
"What is it?"
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"A book, Harlow. That is the reason why you woke us up. Because you wanted to read a book." Marigold growled at her friend, still mad at her for yesterday's scare and exhausted from homework Lily had convinced her to do after the fight. At least I don't have as much to do today as I thought I would. And it's almost worth getting up in order to see the room or requirement. Harlow had made a Gryffindor wake up Lily and her, and then asked them to follow her to a door that Marigold had never seen before. When they'd entered Harlow told them that she wanted to read a book with them.
"It's not just any book, Marigold. This is the reason I've been weird or rollercoaster-like all week, and the reason why I was gone all day yesterday. I needed to get approval from a few people before I could show it to anyone else. It's a book about events that haven't happened yet." Well that got their attention, didn't it.
"A book from the future. Are we in it?"
"One of us is, in a sort of roundabout way. I haven't actually read this one. I read a different one, but I can't find it. The librarian said that the book might disappear once it had been read though, so she said I shouldn't worry about it. Anyways, I thought that this time, I should have someone else read it with me; just so I know I'm not going insane."
"And you chose us?"
"Well, Lily's kind of in here. Or she was in the other one. And I figured you'd want to have your friends with you when we read it. But no pressure if you don't want to read it. You don't have to. I got permission to make forgetful potions so that if we decide at the end of this that we would be better off not knowing, then we could make it go away."
"Is it bad?"
"…Sort of. But maybe we could change things."
"Then, I'm in." Marigold and Athena nodded with Lily in agreement to the decision.
"Alright, well, I'll read the first chapter. The book is called Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."
"Wait, so this has to do with James, too?"
"Yes, but I thought it would be best to introduce the book to a few people at a time."
"Good. If it's bad, I don't know if I want James to know. At least not yet."
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"Hey Remus, can I borrow a book? I'm going to go hang out in the kitchens and read I think."
"Don't you have homework?" James smiled winningly in answer to Sirius' question as he walked to Remus's trunk of books knowing that Remus wouldn't mind his taking of a book. "How the hell James did you finish your homework before the rest of us have started?"
"Well, one of my friends was sickly this week and the other was too busy brooding over a girl to distract me, Pads."
"Oh, fluff it. I'm going to the kitchens with you. I can't concentrate in this room any longer."
"I'll come with you guys, I'm starving. And I'm out of chocolate. What book are you grabbing?"
"Let's see. Hmm. I haven't seen this one before. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. What's that one about, Moony?"
"It's not yours then?"
"What? No. That's why I asked you about it. Have you not read it?"
"I don't even know where the book came from. I just found it when I was looking through my trunk last week."
"Weird. Mind it I read it first then."
"Yah, no problem."
"I say we read it together. Maybe out homework will go away then."
"Ha! You wish, Padfoot. Let's read it in the kitchen though."
"Alright. Reading in alphabetical order? So, me first!"
"Then Remus and then Peter and then me."
"Actually, no. Peter isn't here."
"Huh. Wonder where he is."
"Yah, I haven't seen him as much as usual this year."
"Oh, well. He's not a big fan of reading anyways."
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Second Note: Just a quick reminder of the second note in which I ask you to PLEASE REVIEW. That lets me know that people are actually reading what I write and like it. Thank you!
Third Note: This is a poll! Who do you want to read first? Lily & the girls taking on the first three chapters of the Prisoner of Azkaban? OR the Marauders taking on the first two chapters of the Sorcerer's Stone? I won't post again until I get an opinion. Thank you.