Summer camp
— First day —-
Harry, Susan and their two fathers, or father-figures at least, were welcoming the DA members who arrived by floo. Neville and Hermione and their parents were collecting the muggleborn students with two rented auto buses. Lily had argued that it would be a bit too much for the muggle parents to apparate or floo their kids to summer camp. Right now she and Remus were putting up the large tents that would house all the DA members for the next week, or more likely, they were overseeing how the house elves did it.
The Patil twins had been the first to arrive, and then new people had come in every minute or so. Right now Daphne Greengrass, her sister Astoria and Tracey Davis came out of the fireplace. The two Slytherin girls quickly said hi to Harry and Susan, introduced themselves to James and Sirius and after Tracey asked for Hermione both of them walked towards the mixed group of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff first year girls who were gathered together. Astoria quickly followed them.
As soon as they left James said: 'It is almost unreal to see Slytherins mixing up with the other houses. It was way different in our time.'
Harry just shrugged: 'They asked to join a while ago, and they seem nice enough.'
Sirius snorted: 'Yeah, especially the blond one.'
Harry and James simply grinned but Susan slapped Sirius on his arm. The marauder looked confused and said: 'What? Just look at her, she is very pretty… Not as pretty as you of course, but still.' When Susan shook her head he continued: 'What do you think Harry?'
'Oh… ah, well, I don't know.' Harry stammered before he said: 'Oh look, here are the Weasley's!'
It was a good thing for Harry that two marauder-worshipping twins, a very excited Ginny and a laughing Ron were more than enough to distract everybody from Sirius question. And when Ginny had been pointed to her fellow soon-to-be-first year, the twins had been promised a long talk with the marauders somewhere during the camp and Ron had been satisfied with the promise of a few quidditch matches Remus and Lily walked in and started to comment about the large group. Harry actually took a few moments to count heads before he said: 'I think the Weasley's were the last to arrive. At least, for the magical group.'
Lily nodded, 'And I just got a patronus from Alice, they should be here soon. Maybe we should wait outside and welcome them?'
'Sounds good.' James agreed, before he coughed loudly a few times. Eventually everybody was looking at him: 'Your friends will soon be arriving at the gate. We thought it would be nice to welcome them, so if you all leave your bags here and follow us? The house elves will deliver the bags to your tents.'
A few minutes later the first bus, driven by Jack Granger, arrived. It was quickly followed by the second bus and soon enough a large group of kids was happily chatting with each other. Once again it took James a bit of effort to get their attention, but eventually everybody followed them towards the tents. Once there they found professor McGonagall and a young woman with short bright pink hair waiting for them. James turned around once more and said: 'Right, since this is the first day we figured we should give you all some free time. As you can see there are six tents, three with blue flags and three with red flags. The blue ones are for the boys, the red ones for the girls. You are free to pick a bed for yourself. Just tap the pillow with your wand and a house elf will deliver your luggage to that bed. So, for today, just enjoy yourself and look around a bit. Harry, Susan, Hermione and Neville know their way around here. And of course you can also ask one of the adults.'
Lily took over: 'Yes, maybe I should introduce those adults.' She started pointing at them: 'Most of you know professor McGonagall of course. Next to her is Tonks, she is an auror.' This got some impressed reactions from the kids, but Lily simply moved on: 'Then we have Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville's parents. Next to them are Hermione's parents, Jack and Edna. They are muggles and will show us a few interesting muggle games during this week.' Ron cheered, which earned him some surprised glances from the other students who had not yet heard about paintball. Lily moved on: 'This is Sirius Black, Susans uncle. Next to him is Remus Lupin, a good friend of the family. And we are James and Lily, Harry's parents. If there is a problem you can approach any of us. Are there any questions so far?'
There were none, obviously everybody wanted to start exploring the grounds. And after a quick warning by James that they should not shoot spells at any of the statues he let them go. Harry immediately ran into one of the tents and selected a bed away from the door. He wanted to walk outside again and show some people around, but he was stopped by the Weasley twins who spoke together: 'Harry, our good friend! Don't you think it is time for us to meet the marauders?'
Harry just laughed and said: 'Oh fine, why not. Come on then.'
He was lucky to find all three of them chatting with Frank Longbottom and Jack Granger. As soon as his father noticed him he asked: 'Hey Harry, what's up?'
'Oh, this are Fred and George.' He just randomly pointed to each of them in turn, without a clue if he actually got it right, 'They wanted to meet with the marauders.'
All three marauders grinned while Jack asked: 'The who?'
Frank laughed at the shocked looks that the three marauders suddenly shot to Jack before he explained: 'The three of them formed a sort of pranking club during their Hogwarts career. I guess those two want to know about that.'
Fred and George eagerly nodded. Then Remus asked: 'I take it that you found our map?' When they nodded again he continued: 'How did you work out the password?'
'We found some useful spells in the library.' Fred replied.
'It was a shame that we did not know the magic revealing spell yet.' George added.
Fred nodded in agreement: 'It would have saved a lot of time.'
'But at least it helped our research along.' George concluded excitedly.
'I hesitate to ask, but what kind of research?' Jack wanted to know.
'Well, research into joke items of course.' Fred replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
George grinned and pulled a small item out of his pocket. It looked like a small biscuit filled with cream. 'I think that without those revealing spells we would have needed years to make this work. Watch this.' George said before eating it. Seconds later George was replaced by a huge yellow canary who happily whistled a song and stepped around a bit. A few seconds later the canary changed back into George again.
'That was absolutely brilliant.' Remus commented while the others cheered and clapped, 'How did you do that? It is potion based I guess? I admit that always was my weakest subject.'
'Remus, or Moony, was our researcher.' James clarified, 'I am Prongs by the way.'
'And I am Padfoot. Lets not talk about Wormtail.' Sirius happily added, and before the twins could ask why not he continued: 'Can I try one of those? It looks like fun.'
George hesitated: 'I am not sure if that would be a good idea.'
'We have not yet tested them on anyone but ourselves. So we are not sure how body mass and things like that would influence the transformation.' Fred clarified.
'In fact, we are not even sure how to start testing.' George added.
'How did you make it work for yourselves then?' Frank wondered.
Fred shrugged: 'We are okay with taking risks for ourselves, but we need to know a bit more of the risks involved before we recruit other testers.'
Harry wanted to say that he was surprised by such a responsible attitude, but Jack was faster: 'I know a bit of the many laws involved in testing medicine in the muggle world. Does the wizarding world have the same laws?'
Fred and George just looked at each other before they shrugged, so it was James who replied: 'No, in fact there are no real laws involved. Basically, if you hurt someone with a potion or spell that you designed you will be tried for it. In fact, in some cases you will be called to court even if someone else abuses a spell or potion you designed.'
Jack nodded and frowned: 'I might be able to hand you some muggle books about medicine testing. It might help.'
'That would be great.' Fred smiled.
'We never really thought about looking in the muggle world for help.' George said.
'Beside that, we would have no idea where to look.' Fred concluded.
'Doesn't your father work in muggle relations?' Frank asked.
'Yes, but unless we need plugs we do not really expect much help from him.' Fred grinned.
'Plugs?' Sirius wondered before he said: 'Never mind. Tell me what other things you two have made up. Oh, and after that we should talk about the pranks you pulled.'
Fred and George smiled identical evil smiles and started to explain about headless hats, puking pastilles, magical fireworks and nosebleed nougats among many other inventions. Some of them were almost ready for production, but many of them still needed a lot of work. Eventually Remus said: 'I am impressed. We never really worked on items, most of our pranks involved charming or transfiguring things.'
'Well, we want to open a joke shop sometime. So we need gadgets.' George replied.
James who had looked thoughtful for a while suddenly looked up and said: 'A joke shop? That sounds interesting.'
Fred shrugged: 'We hope to make enough money by selling things like the canary creams during our Hogwarts years. But most likely we will have to get normal jobs for a few years first.'
Sirius wanted to say something, but James quickly held up a hand to stop him: 'We might have a proposal for you.'
The twins looked at him in surprise while James took the time to sort his thoughts: 'Those headless hats, they work with an extended disillusionment spell that activates when you put them on, right?'
'More or less, we had to alter the spell a bit.' Fred agreed.
'Beside that, we still can not get it to keep working while you walk around.' George added.
James nodded: 'Could you do the same with a shield spell?'
Both twins looked surprised at that. Then George said: 'I think so. That would be fun, let someone shoot a spell at you and just ignore it without raising your wand.'
James grinned: 'I was thinking more about using them in duels. Anyway, what I wanted to suggest is that we pay the two of you to create a few things like that. I do not expect some kind of invulnerable armor, but everything that could help us or the DA members in actual fights would be great.'
Fred and George frowned and silently communicated with each other. Eventually George said: 'That would mean we have less time to create joke items.'
'True.' Remus nodded, 'But think of the time you would save by opening the joke shop right after you get your NEWTs.'
They brightened at that and together replied: 'Okay, we are interested.'
The adults and Harry laughed at that. It was James who said: 'Good to hear. We will work out the details some other time. There is one extra condition though.' Both twins looked worried and James continued: 'You will have to get a good amount of OWLs and NEWTs. I am afraid your mother would kill the three of us if she thought that you two performed poorly because of this.'
The twins nodded and Fred said: 'I guess we can do that.'
'It is not like the classes are too difficult.' George added.
'Good, now go have fun. I will discuss things with Lily and Sirius and then we'll talk about it with you two again.' James concluded.
The twins saluted but before they could leave Remus said: 'Oh, before you go. Do you have the map with you?'
'Of course.' George said.
'Can I borrow it for a day or two? I need to check some things.' Remus said. George just shrugged, pulled the map out of one of his pockets and handed it over. Remus just smiled before he motioned to Jack and the two men walked away even before Harry could pull Fred and George towards the quidditch field where some brooms were already zooming around.
— Second day —
The second day of the camp started with an awful lot of quidditch. All the available Gryffindor quidditch players, three chasers and two beaters, told Harry that he had to be their new seeker. According to Fred he would display some of their new fireworks to celebrate McLaggen leaving the team. It was too bad that the Gryffindor quidditch captain was not in the DA, but Harry figured that he would have a good chance with the backup of all other team members. Susan also got a lot of compliments for her beating, but no one really offered to let her replace one of the Weasley twins.
Those twins, and their younger brother Ron, had been shocked when they found out how well Ginny could fly. She was one of the more talented chasers and members of each house started to try and recruit her. Of course the twins interfered, stating that Ginny was a Weasley and had to end up in Gryffindor. Beside that, George admitted he was scared of the idea of sending bludgers to his baby sister. According to him his mother would kill him if she heard about it.
There were several other surprises, especially among the former first years who had not been able to try out so far. And even the people who were less enthusiastic about quidditch had a good time. Either with the football game that Dean Thomas had organised together with Jack Granger or by cheering on the players of one of the two games. During lunch Sirius dryly commented that even Dobby would soon start to complain about the work pressure if the hungry kids kept eating so much. Lily just smiled and added that tomorrow would probably be even worse.
After the lunch Remus asked for a show of what the DA could do. And soon enough the quidditch field was filled with numerous small groups who were exchanging spell fire with each other. The adults, beside the Grangers, walked from group to group and offered advice and help. Harry had to admit that they had missed their parents help during the year. In a way, the four of them had been the most experienced fighters at the DA, but it was nothing compared to the actual battle experience of their parents. Ginny and Astoria respectively followed Lily and professor McGonagall and carefully listened to the advices the older witches gave. Eventually Lily even asked a group to start shooting harmless hexes at Ginny and asked her to dodge. She was actually quite good at it, and Astoria was rather disappointed when it was her turn and she lasted not even half as long as Ginny.
After a few hours the adults allowed the kids to go back to their quidditch and football. Harry actually joined the football for a while and thought it was fun enough. Although it was not half as fun as quidditch of course, he missed his broom and the more chaotic situation of quidditch. His preference had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was mercilessly taunted when Daphne shot a ball through his legs.
— Third day —
On the third day Jack and Edna asked everybody to go dress in old clothes and then meet them to the quidditch field again. Harry was not the only one to cheer when he saw the familiar obstacles that were spread around the field, although most people just looked at them in wonder. This changed when the Grangers showed some paintball guns and gave pretty much the same speech as they had done last year.
Most of the kids had heard stories about last years quidditch event from Harry, Hermione, Neville, Susan or Ron during the last few days. And all of them were excited to give it a try now. They would start with a huge free for all in which everybody could become familiar with the guns. All of the adults, except Edna Granger and professor McGonagall, joined as well and soon enough large numbers of small coloured balls were flying around. Eventually Fred and George decided to change the game and they each swallowed one of their canary creams. Of course all the others could not resist shooting at the two large canaries.
Sirius apparently thought it was a good idea. He pulled out his wand and transfigured Remus into an ostrich. James retaliated by changing Sirius into a large poodle. A few seconds later Remus thanked James for his help by turning him into a kangaroo. And while McGonagall commented on the impressive transfiguration work and tried to explain the way transfiguration magic worked to Edna the three marauders turned each other into more and more ridiculous animals. Eventually Lily managed to calm down everyone enough to gather for a late lunch, although she forbid the marauders to join them until they got washed up. The three men resembled liquid rainbows when they slowly walked back to the manor for a change of clothes.
After the lunch they did some regular team games that revolved around capturing a flag and returning it to your own flag. Because there were so many players they were grouped into four large teams and there was chaos all around until Hermione introduced a new tactic for her team during the fourth round. She found a position in front of their flag that was well protected by some obstacles and let her team form two long lines. One standing, and the line in front kneeling down. As soon as anyone tried to approach their line they would unleash a storm of bullets that would take the attacker out every time. They won three games in a row by simply taking out many enemies before even moving for the other flags.
However, in the next round Remus and George levelled their line by what they called a 'paint bomb'. Basically they had magically fused a lot of bullets together, used a banishing spell to fire it at the defensive line of Hermione's team where it exploded and took down most of the team. After the match Hermione and several of her team mates protested that it was unfair. Edna just smiled and suggested that magic would be free to use during the next round.
It was chaos.
The protego shields were a nice addition to the game. But disillusionment charms were a bit over the top though, and flags zooming over the pitch due to summoning charms pretty much destroyed the idea of a capture the flag game. Of course Sirius had to gather the most attention by protecting himself with a strange charm that made a large number of small stone pebbles hover around him and intercept any bullet that came close to him. By now the ideas of 'capture the flag' and 'team play' had long ago been abandoned in the chaotic match, but many players grouped together to try and shoot through Sirius' strange spell. They were unsuccessful and got attacked in the back when Edna decided that all of the players who had been shot during the round could enter the pitch again. Eventually Sirius dropped his shield because it blocked his own attacks as well and he immediately got hit by about twenty bullets.
On the other side of the pitch Lily and James were summoning water balloons and banishing them at each other and random other players, which looked rather disturbing when the paint on people's clothes started to run. Tonks tried to stop them with a few strong gusts of wind, but Lily simply raised a magical wall to block her spells.
In the meanwhile Remus and Harry had teamed up as well. Remus had conjured two dark red ribbons and had bound them around their foreheads, then they had each claimed a second gun from the box near Edna before strolling on the field side by side firing non stop out of all their four guns while Remus somehow managed to cast a charm that played the theme song of a muggle movie. Of course, as soon as enough people noticed their killing spree they were blasted out of the field by numerous bullets.
Susan had also found a team. Together with the Weasley twins and Alicia Spinnet she had climbed on top of one of the larger obstacles. They had summoned a bright red banner and were shouting crazy comments about their 'castle' to anyone who approached them. Neville was not sure if he should feel upset or elated while Susan told him there was no room for 'hunky hunks' in their castle. Of course, she followed her comment with a bright orange bullet between his eyes, which made Neville tempt to go with the first choice.
After a very long time Edna had to blow her whistle very loudly for a few times before she finally got the attention of everybody. 'You guys should hit the showers, it is dinner time. Oh, and if you have any bruises professor McGonagall here has offered to heal them.'
It was a good thing that more than half of the people decided to line up in front of the professor, because the magical tents had not even close to enough showers for everybody to clean up at the same time. After dinner Edna suggested to do another day of paintball tomorrow. The cheers died down a little when she said that only the protego spell would be allowed tomorrow, but everybody still seemed excited about the idea.
— Fifth day —
On the fifth day it started to rain during breakfast, and since it did not look likely that the weather would improve anytime soon everybody was invited inside for a day of games. The muggle games like clue, monopoly and risk gathered a lot of attention, and it was clear to see that the muggleborns enjoyed being on the explaining side for a change.
Harry and several other boys were mesmerized by a muggle miniature skirmish game called warhammer that the adults had bought somewhere during the school year. There were four large painted armies to choose from, and Remus had bewitched them to act like wizarding chess pieces. At the end of the day they still did not understand all the rules, but it was a lot of fun to manoeuver the armies around and watch them attack each other.
However, the event that got the most attention was Remus almost beating Ron in a wizarding chess match. For a while it looked like Remus was actually going to win, but due to a brilliant move with his remaining knight Ron managed to save the game. It was very close though.
During the evening Sirius and James asked Harry to be their 'witness' while they made a deal with the Weasley twins. He was supposed to act as a contact person between the twins and the marauders during the school year. Basically the two marauders would give the twins a small amount of money each year to buy some materials. The twins would use part of their time to work on magical defence items and if they finished Hogwarts with enough OWLs and NEWTs to make their mom proud James and Sirius would help them set up a joke shop. Fred and George suggested a loan, but James and Sirius just smiled and said that it all depended on how the twins would behave during the next four years.
The twins tried to get a more clear outline of their plans. But all the marauders wanted to say was they would help them. Eventually they just shrugged and did a victory dance before leaving the room. Sirius called to them: 'Oh, you can go to Remus to get your map back, he is done with it!'
— Sixth day —
The sixth day resembled the free for all hour that usually ended the DA meetings. Although Lily heavily suggested that everybody would at least use part of the day for spell work or duelling. Harry and most others obediently did so, but much of the time was filled with quidditch, paintball and games.
At the end of the day the elves joined the others at dinner. The men were planning a barbeque. Of course, even with magic they did not manage to prevent enough meat from burning, and the house elves eventually had to help. But everybody liked having them around, especially the easily excited Dobby was a hit. Some of the muggleborns were quite surprised when they learned that Hogwarts had a large house elf staff as well. Apparently they thought the castle was kept clean by magic, which was not unreasonable of course.
They concluded the last day with an old comedy movie. The muggleborns mostly enjoyed the reactions of the pureblood kids to both the movie and the TV in general and the movie. All of them already knew the movie anyway.
— Seventh day —
Last night the movie had ended after midnight. And today it seemed like all of the DA members finally were tired. Or maybe they were sad that the camp was going to end today. However, the atmosphere was rather subdued and silent. Only when it was almost time to go something happened. Ron proved he was a son of his father when he loudly asked: 'Can we go home with the bus things as well? It looks like much more fun than the floo.'
Many purebloods loudly voiced their agreement, and soon enough the adults agreed with the idea as well. There was a bit of a problem when some of the pureblood kids had no idea what muggle village or town would be closest to their homes. But eventually professor McGonagall made a quick visit to Hogwarts where she copied the addresses.
Harry jumped into the Longbottom bus before his parents could stop him. He wanted to stay with the group for a bit longer, after today he would be stuck at Lionfire Hall for almost five weeks before Hogwarts started again. And although Hermione, Susan and Neville would of course visit a lot they would all go on a two or three week vacation sometime while his own parents had decided it would be too risky for the Potter family with Voldemort on the loose. And so he just popped down next to Ron while behind him Frank told Lily that they would return Harry safe and sound.
A/N: Sorry about the slow update, but between a few birthday and a few job interviews I simply did not have enough time… At least it is a long update though, I wanted to have the summer camp out of the way in one chapter. After all, I want to get started with second year ;)
So, to reviews again:
Tessia: Somewhere in the beginning of the story James and Lily agreed they would not have other children until Voldemort was dealt with. I just assumed the others would agree with that reasoning;) Well, beside the Grangers who do not know all of it yet, but they only had one child in canon as well…
Teufel1987: What do you mean with factored in? Ask him for help? Or prepare for his interruptions?;) Amelia tried to look for possible help at the ministry, and Dumbledore will of course use his connections. But I am not sure if the group around James or the group around Harry will become really involved in politics. I am quite sure they will not go looking for it, but it is possible that the ministry will start pestering them sometime. Fudge will show up in a few chapters at least… It helps that Harry is not really the boy-who-lived anymore I guess.
Happylady, Artera Lysander, Mwinter1, TsukiyoTenshi, Jbfritz,MSupernatural, Rori Potter, Sanbeegoldiewhitey, Penny is wise, : Thanks!
Cassiopeia Potter: Thanks, I will edit both after uploading this chapter;)
Sirius009: But only my last nine or ten chapters happened during the timeline of PS (if you ignore the prologue at least),I am quite sure that is less than 75k words. Not that it really matters, more action will appear soon, but I will keep taking my time to reach the final battle…
Blue Luver 5000: I am not sure if Molly would approve of what happened in this chapter… At least it might make Fred and George actually work for their OWLs;)
Man of Faith: To be fair, he was invited;) But he did not hesitate to use the opportunity I guess.
MAFITA: Yep, this was faster;) Beside that, I did not really have a reasonable way to let Harry win a fight against an adult at this time. It is not like he did that well against Quirrel in canon until his mothers protection kicked in. But without Lily's sacrifice that would be difficult to achieve. And although I think Harry is a bit more ready to duel right now than he was at the end of the first canon book it is still a bit too soon for actual fights. Oh, and no problem about the two reviews;)
