This chapter was edited as of the 2nd of August! Much love, BlueberryQuill
Kora had completed six years at Hogwarts, which obviously amounted to a lot of weeks. None, however, had been quite like this. None had been quite this shit.
It turned out that she had temporarily misplaced a lot more stuff than the Marauders had stolen, her school bag developed an unpleasant habit of eating her textbooks, and her head became a magnet for misfiring curses. She found herself tripping over every uneven paving stone, falling down stairs frequently and slipping over in the shower on a daily basis. She had received a letter from Quality Quidditch Supplies letting her know that her broomstick would take another week to fix and that it would probably cost another two galleons, which she didn't own, extra. Her shoes continued to swing tantalizingly from the inside of the clock, under anti-summoning charms, and she had a horrible feeling that she was a direct cause of the fact that Gryffindor was losing the House cup. She looked a state pretty much permanently, because she couldn't do healing charms as much as the petty accidents warranted.
The Marauders had hardly been helpful. James had offered her his broomstick, which she had denied - his idea of a good laugh would probably be watching her fall from the clock tower and breaking a limb. Sirius had offered her his broomstick, which she had denied, because owing Sirius too much would forge a link between them, a link that the Marauders had made oh-so-clear did not exist. Sirius had also been popping up in all sorts of places that he wasn't wanted - starting dead conversations in Care of Magical Creatures, correcting her gently in Potions and always there, with a textbook to share. The only brief respites she got from him were during her free periods, where he generally had either Muggle Studies or Divination. He was always curious, and terribly predictable.
"Oi, Maver - what happened to-" he called out, as she walked into the Great Hall for dinner, with weeds still in her damp hair.
She scowled at him. "I fell out of a tree into the lake. Yes, I'm alright. No, I don't want to borrow spare robes, they won't fit. The drying charm you offered last time was shit. I'm still as unlucky as hell. I don't see that it's your business, and yes, I wish you would just leave me alone. And I should be good by tomorrow." She quickly answered all the questions he was wont to answer as dryly as she could, before perching on the bench next to Piraveena, and accepting a shot of the clear fluid they were using to thin out their pumpkin juice.
"She's a damn sight better at Divination than you, now Sirius!" said Peter, attacking his bolognaise with great gusto, and much tomato sauce flying into his hair.
Remus looked at Sirius, and shook his head. "I still don't get why you're taking Divination, it is the stupidest subject. You remember fifth year?" He pulled his hair over his eyes, and spoke with a much higher pitch, in a near perfect imitation of the fraudulent Trelawney. "And you, James Potter, I see in fifteen or so years time, will break out of a laundry closet, befriend a weasel and a beaver, and hunt for the lost Horklumps. I mean, I know that some of her claims are a bit batty, but that was just way too far fetched!"
Sirius smiled, in spite of himself. "I am taking Divination, my friend, because it is the easiest goddamn subject to pass. All I've had to do is gaze into a crystal ball and a mug of tea, and tell her that the end of the world is nigh."
"It's hardly a subject that is going to make you employable!"
"Yeah, but they don't let you take broom-making, now do they? I'm going to have to take an apprenticeship, and all they want is Charms and Herbology," he said, to general surprise from the group.
Peter nudged James in the ribs. "He can make the brooms, and Maver can fly the brooms and they can all have scrawny Quidditch playing seeker children." James gave Peter a stony sort of glare, and picked some of the dry mud off his Quidditch robes.
"Kora doesn't want to play Quidditch - she wants to be a dragon keep-" Sirius began softly.
"Too fucking right Maver doesn't want to play Quidditch." James snarled, his brown eyes looking positively lethal. "Too damn fucking right."
Remus looked sympathetically over the table at him. "Tryouts couldn't have been that bad-"
"Oh, they fucking were," James growled. "The new beater is shit and the seeker is a whole new level of crappiness."
"Who?" said Peter, ignoring the shut the fuck up what the hell are you doing looks that Remus and Sirius were giving him.
"Bruce Thompson's the beater, who missed a few less balls than he hit, but that says nothing at all; and Alastair Ealing is the motherfucking Seeker, who is an arsehole and a prick and manage to catch a grand total of three golfballs in his tryout. But he was better than the others - because no one who can fucking decently play Quidditch, like your precious Kora bothered to show the fuck up!"
"Oh, it's not that bad," soothed Remus, pouring James another pumpkin juice. "There has got to be something-"
"There is nothing good about this!" said James, slurping up the last of his pasta, and draining the goblet in one. "There is nothing we can do about this save hexing the other team, and it's Slytherin - they'd be onto us in a second! Sirius, mate? Could you play?"
"Wow, James, you must be really desperate...you know how shit I am at seeker. And I've already been made commentator for the year, you know that."
James' face was murderous. "Well, I suppose I'm going to go up to bed." He stalked out of the hall, leaving his friends looking concernedly at each other, and Kora sitting still, trembling slightly, and trying to pretend that she had been oblivious to the turmoil she had inadvertently created.