Two of a Kind.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Harry Potter as much as I'd like to.
A/N: I can't wait for the next Harry Potter book, and it comes out on my half birthday. YAY! Thank you to everyone whose reviewed my story and I'll try to update again soon so long as there's no assignments and assessment takes to complete and blah, blah, blah. Enjoy.
Chapter 10: Black's Cats.
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At dinner a lone owl flew into the Great Hall and soared over the Gryffindor table dropping a letter in front of the Marauder's, Holly and Lily. None of them had even noticed the owl came in or notice the letter that had been dropped. They we're too busy talking and laughing at each other to notice what happened around them.
Peter put his head down to spoon up some more of his pumpkin soup and screamed. Lily and Holly screamed after him, although they didn't know what they were screaming at and ended up laughing until they could hardly breathe.
"Pete, it's just a letter. Only a letter." Sirius said gloomily as he picked the letter out of his bowl. "And fancy that, it's for me, from my dearest Mum."
Everyone could hear the strong sarcasm in his voice as he ripped the envelope open and red the letter to himself.
"Hey James she's got another one for me. It's coming tomorrow." He told James who was sitting across the table from him.
"Another what?" Holly asked curiously as she reached for a piece of bread, cut it in half and gave the other half to Lily.
"Yeah," Lily said. "What this mysterious thingy that only James knows about? I wanna know what it is."
"Is it the thing about the thing?" Remus asked as Sirius nodded to him. "Ok, I also know what it is." He stated to the girls.
"Won't you guys tell us?" Holly asked fluttering her eyes at Sirius and Remus who were sitting across from her.
"So, who are you going to sell it to?" James asked ignoring what Holly had said. "You haven't had one for a while, like since half way through last year."
"I hope she stops sending them. Then I won't have to keep selling them." The gloomy voice replied. "To answer your question, I don't know. Who do you think will want one?"
"Want one of what?" Lily and Holly said at the same time. They smiled at each other knowing that they both thought they knew each other too well.
"Is anyone still eating? Why don't we go back to the common room?" Remus suggested looking and James and Sirius who both nodded like they were talking about a secret society. (A/N: don't ask why I said that I have no idea. Lol)
"We can't leave yet, Peter's still eating." James said while looking at everyone else.
"Go with out me, I don't mind. Besides, the desserts haven't even come out yet. I don't care what your mother's letter said." Peter replied as he ate another mouthful of food. (A/N: DIRTY OLD RAT…. I mean oh forget it!)
"Are you sure? Because we can wait, it's no problem?" Sirius said.
"He's sure, now lets get moving before the crowds turn up." Lily said hurriedly getting out of her seat with Holly and trying to get James out of his seat.
"Fine, fine I'm up. For heaven's sake what's wrong with you? All pushy today aren't we?" James argued while looking down at her.
"Funny." She replied sarcastically
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A few deliberate wrong turns, a million flights of stairs and a lot of time wasting later, most of the Marauder's, Lily and Holly made it to the common room safely.
"Short cut, as if." Lily complained as she sank into a couch by the fire. "Remind me to kill all three of you when I have the energy."
"It wasn't that bad." James answered her complaint as he sat next to her.
"Whatever." Was her only reply.
"Look at them," Sirius said to Remus and Holly. "Not yet married and already having marriage problems. How will we ever get them to have children?"
Holly started giggling about this and Remus and Sirius smiled at the thought.
"Very funny. Absolutely hilarious." Lily said clapping her hands slowly to show her anger. "We're not going to get married nor have children. So you can just leave it alone."
"Are you willing to make a bet on that?" Sirius asked smiling mischievously.
"So, the letter. What did it say? What was it about?" Holly asked changing the subject very quickly.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot that's why we came up here." Remus pointed out. "Well Sirius, you do the honours"
"Well, my mum breeds cats and I have to sell them, here." Sirius paused. Lily and Holly waited for the rest of the answer to come out but nothing happened. After a few minutes Holly spoke.
"That's it? That's the secret 'thing' that you couldn't tell us down stairs and took almost an hour to tell us?" Holly asked annoyed "Well I think I'm going to go to bed. Coming Lily?"
"Yeah I s'pose so." She got half off the couch when Sirius started talking again.
"You can't go, now you know what it is you have to help me sell it. Obviously mum couldn't sell this one and it's going to be cheep, it's probably a runt, or not black or something, but I still have to sell it. The money I get from the ones I sell I get to keep, it'll go towards my living in the wizarding world by myself. Please you have to help me."
"How much are you selling it for this time?" James asked while he guided Lily once again into a seat on the couch.
"Well it depends on what type of cat it is. If it has a little black on it, like half black half something else, about 2 maybe 3 sickles. With no black on it, 1 sickle maybe a sickle and a few knuts if I'm lucky." He answered.
"That's all?" Lily asked surprisedly. "A couple of sickles or a few knuts? Anyone would but that."
"You don't understand Lils," Remus said to her. "Mrs Black has a strong reputation of breeding Black cats. When Sirius goes around selling non black ones people get suspicious and wonder if her cats aren't really black."
"Ok so we find someone who doesn't care what colour it is, a muggle born witch or wizard." She suggested.
"They're even harder to sell to. When you were younger, were you told witches and wizards always have black cats to spook people?" James asked, Lily nodded to him.
"Then that's the type they want, right?" Holly put in. The boys nodded their answer.
They all sat thinking for a while, no one speaking afraid they might break someone's concentration.
"I'll buy it." Lily whispered.
"Pardon?" James asked leaning into her.
"I'll buy the cat. I don't care what it looks like and I have my own money. I'll go get it now." She answered jumping up from the couch and running up the stairs to the girls dormitories and was back in minute.
"Here, its 3 sickles. I don't care if it's got absolutely no colour what so ever, I'm paying 3 sickles and you can just love me forever." Lily joked smiling at him. Before he could object she continued to talk. "So it's settled, I get the cat tomorrow and you don't have to worry about selling it to anyone. I think I'll go to bed now. Coming Holly?" She didn't wait for an answer just kissed each boy on the cheek and went up stairs with Holly trailing behind her.
"That was slightly strange." Remus said looking at the others
"Yeah, what in hell possessed her to kiss us as well as James? Her kisses are reserved for him only!" Sirius complained.
James said nothing her just stared into space thinking about a certain redhead.
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The next morning at breakfast a giant box arrived at the Gryffindor table. Everyone was really excited. No one ever got boxes in the mail. When the package landed at Sirius the whole school's excitement fell.
"It's probably dung bombs." A 5th year Hufflepuff girl said to her friend as she walked past them.
"Yeah or a whole bunch of other prank equipment." Her friend replied.
"Hi James." The first girl said seductively and ran her hand along his back, then continued to walk over to the Hufflepuff table.
"A friend of yours?" Holly asked with an amused hint in her voice.
"No." Was his rushed reply, as he looked across the table at her angrily.
"So," Lily said quickly changing the subject. James' old girlfriends were not her favourite topic to talk about. "Is that what I think it is?" She looked really happy at the thought of getting a kitten, no matter what it looked like.
"Lily it has airholes and is meowing, what do you think?" Sirius told her not even looking at the package.
"Do you want me to take it then?" She asked as politely as she could considering the kitten was being ignored at the moment.
"Do as you like, it's your kitten." Was his reply.
Lily stood up and lent over the table to pick the box up. She was about to lift the lid when James stood up quickly and reached for the box.
"Here, let me help you carry it to the common room. So many flights of stairs, you might drop it." He smiled at her showing his pearly white teeth. (A/N: Don't ask me why I decided to put that in there I just felt like it.)
"James it's not that heavy. I'm sure it's hardly even 6 weeks old." Lily thought about that for a moment then said. "Why was a tiny thing like that placed in such a small box?"
"I owled mum and told her you didn't have anything to look after a cat with and that there isn't a store for that around here, so she must of sent something for that." Sirius answered still not paying that much attention.
"Ok, well Lily and I better get this thing upstairs before it kills us. Bye, see you guys later. (A/N: and for anyone who's forgotten like I almost did, it's a Sunday at Hogwarts.)
"See ya." Remus and Holly replied. Sirius just waved.
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Lily and James walked up to the common room in silence. Every now and then Lily looked over at him, but the minute he turned to look at her she turned back towards the corridor. (A/N: I know typical)
'How come when you don't want to go to the common room you're there in no time, but when you can't wait to get there it takes forever?' Lily thought to herself as she stole another glance at James. This time he was looking at the same time as her and they both snapped their heads away from each other's view.
"So," Lily said trying to think of something to talk about to pass the time. 'What should I say? What should I say?' She thought quickly as they started to climb another staircase. 'A good topic…um…Quidditch!'
"When does quidditch training start?" She said inwardly praising herself for coming up with something so quickly. (A/N: Don't you get those times when you don't know what to say and spend forever trying to think of something? I do!)
"Not for a month of two. McGonagall has to contact me first." James replied.
'That was the shortest answer about quidditch I've ever heard from his mouth. I'll wait a little while to find out if there's anything else he wants to say.' Lily thought again. (A/N: wow she's doing a lot of thinking.)
Lily waited and waited. Finally she couldn't take it anymore she had to say something.
"Is that it? You base your life on winning quidditch matches, you finally become captain of the team and all you can say is McGonagall has to contact me?" She snapped
James just looked at her no saying anything. The truth was he was shocked. He was pretty sure Lily wasn't that interested in quidditch, but by the way she was acting you'd think it was her life.
Lily looked away.
'How stupid can I get?' She asked herself. 'I mean I don't care if he has nothing else to say about quidditch. It's not like it's my life or anything. I just wanted him to say something.'
They continued walking in silence. Lily mentally killing herself for being so rude, but not having enough courage to apologise. James thinking about ways to kill himself for not saying something back. Finally they reached the common room. Lily said the password and walked inside, James was following straight after carrying the box with the kitten in it. He placed in on the table in front of the fireplace. Lily sat on the other side, but didn't start opening the box.
'Come on Lily. APOLOGISE!' She screamed at herself. 'Some Gryffindor you are if you aren't brave enough to say SORRY!'
"James…" Lily started looking up at him from where she sat.
"Hey don't worry about it Lils." He replied walking over to the couch and sitting down next to her. "It's not your fault I didn't answer you properly, I just didn't think you'd be interested and it's not like you come to many of the games anyway, so don't stress about it."
"But I shouldn't have snapped at you. It wasn't my business, and you didn't have to answer me. I was just trying to make small talk." Lily told him.
"Again don't worry about it." He said taking her hands and holding them in his.
They looked at each other. James leant towards Lily, bent his head and-
"So have you opened it yet?" Sirius asked coming out of no-where.
James and Lily jumped apart from each other so fast and hard that Lily fell off the couch.
"What, the box is still closed? We didn't miss anything?" Holly said sitting down on one of the side chairs.
"Were we interrupting?" Remus asked helping Lily off the floor and sitting on the arm of the couch.
"Not at all," James replied. "Just got here. We were taking our time to get to the common room and haven't even gotten around to opening it."
"It's probably purple or something. We've had one of those before, couldn't selling it months. Of course being a wizard place selling a purple cat from a Black's Cat shop was mighty hard. But I managed to sell it fine," Sirius smiled at Holly. "I just used a bit of Black charm."
"You have as much charm as a squashed bug." Lily muttered as she reached over the table for the kitten's box.
The rest of the group just stared at her, bewildered. Lily usually didn't voice opinions about people unless they were good ones, the bad opinions were reserved for Holly's ears only.
"Let's see what this little thingy looks like." Lily said opening the lid, ignoring the looks from the others.
She put her hands into the box and lifted the kitten out. Sirius took a deep breath, holding it as though he didn't know what was coming out. James and Remus stared at him and Holly's attention was only on what was being pulled out of the box. The kitten came out and everyone's jaw's dropped. The kitten was…
"Black?" Holly and Remus said at the same time.
The Kitten was a very little thing. Its eyes were bright blue with silver tints in it and was purely black, absolutely no white was to be found on it (James checked). The only problem Lily could see was that it looked as though the kitten had permanent static electricity.
"It's a fluff ball." Commented James.
"That's not a very nice thing to say about the kitten James." Lily remarked. "Besides, you can't talk. The kitten's hair looks exactly like yours does." Lily smiled at him and turned back to the kitten.
"Nice come back Lily." Remus complimented her.
"Thank you." Lily said. "Aren't you the cutest thing?" She lifted the cat into the air and looked into its eyes.
"Lils, what are you going to name it?" Holly asked her genuinely interested.
"Well first I have to check its sex. I mean what good would it be if I gave it a girls name and it was a boy?" Lily answered her.
"It's a boy." Sirius said to her. "Mum told me in the letter."
"Well why didn't you tell me earlier?" Lily asked angrily
"Because I didn't want you choosing names forever." Sirius replied
"It was going to be a Day Sirius. One day to get a head start on giving it a name." She said forcefully at him.
"Call it James Junior. 'Coz it looks like James." Remus said ducking from a pillow being thrown at his head.
"I dunno, I'll have to think of a name still. I'm definitely not calling it James Junior, James' head is big enough already without him having a cat named after him." Lily said, also ducking from a pillow being thrown at her from the place next to her, which is kind of hard to miss from such a short distance. It missed. (A/N: you wonder why he missed? Think it was deliberate?) "For the moment we'll just call him Kit. Short for kitten. I'll think of something soon, but it might not be for a while."
"Well then Kit, welcome to Gryffindor common room." James said waving his hands around them room. The cat just meowed.
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And so this concludes this chapter. I'll write more soon. Just to tell you. My friend really has a cat that looks like it has permanent static electricity, and she still doesn't have a name for it and she's had it for like 7 weeks now.
Did you think Lily and James were gonna kiss yet? Not that simple, but their first kiss will be coming up soon, I can't wait that long. I've been having some ideas about how to get them together like a truth or dare game or maybe one day James just asks her out on impulse, but what ever it is there will be some exciting things involved in being James' girlfriend, but not all of it will be good.
So review if you like and I'll update soon.
Bye, bye.
waves