Everyone back in their spots, Charlie and Dora rejoining the group so that Teddy, Percy and Cedric could nap in the nursery, Marlene started.
"Chapter 10 - Halloween
Malfoy couldn't believe his eyes when he saw that Aurora and Ron were still at Hogwarts the next day, looking tired but perfectly cheerful.
"Oh that wasn't his issue," Blaise laughed. "He was honestly surprised that he was being punished for not showing up to the duel that he challenged you too." Draco just sent Aurora a glare that said 'I told you so' before moving his glare to Blaise.
Indeed, by the next morning Aurora and Ron thought that meeting the three-headed dog had been an excellent adventure, and they were quite keen to have another one.
"No!" Sirius declared. "You don't need adventures like that."
James and Lily looked incredulously at Sirius. He defended himself by saying, "It's one thing to explore in the middle of the night in the castle that isn't hiding a dangerous artifact being guarded by a cerberus and who knows what else. It is something completely different to go looking for dangerous situations." He huffed and crossed his arms. James, Lily, Marlene and Aurora smiled softly at him
"Or both," said Aurora.
"That's a good deduction with the little amount of information that you have," Kingsley said, rather impressed with this girl's thinking even at eleven.
All Neville cared about was never going near the dog again, and he urged Aurora to not go near it either. When he realized that she had found the adventure fun, all he asked of her was to be careful.
"It's pointless to argue with Ro when she gets an idea into her head," Neville said. "Sometimes it's better to try and keep the damage to a minimum rather than spend days trying to talk her out of something and she goes and does it anyway."
"Sounds like someone I know," Alice and Marlene said at the same time looking at Lily. Lily just smiled, holding back a laugh and looked down trying to look contrite.
she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus. It had made things in the dorm a little awkward at times, but since Aurora was spending so much time with the boys they hardly saw each other outside of classes.
"I swear you spent more time in the boys dorm than you did in ours our entire time at Hogwarts," Hermione said, Aurora just shrugged, she might love Hermione, but she couldn't stand to be around Lavender and Parvati's gossiping about boys in the early years and her in the later years.
"Most of my friends are boys," Aurora replied.
"It's really not fair that girls can come into our dorms whenever they want, and we can't get into theirs," Peter groaned.
a long, thin package carried by six large screech owls.
"It was not subtle what it was," Blaise said. "Adrian had also heard Wood telling Alicia and Angelina that you were on the team, so the other teams knew as well."
"Like Gideon said, 'Nothing stays secret at Hogwarts'," Regulus drawled.
"Oh I can think of a couple secrets that people don't know," Aurora, Ron, Hermione and Neville said together.
At the curious looks, they all just said they would have to read all the books.
dropped it right in front of her, knocking her bacon to the floor.
"A waste of perfectly good bacon," Aurora moaned. After treacle tart, bacon was her second favorite food.
seven o'clock for your first training session.
Professor McGonagall
"You bought her her first broom!" James asked, extremely appreciative.
"It does appear that way."
"She told me later that it was to make up for the years of birthday and Christmas presents that she missed," Aurora clarified. She and Professor McGonagall had had a long conversation during the rebuilding of Hogwarts after the war.
Aurora had difficulty hiding her glee as she handed the note to Ron to read. She couldn't wait to get on a broom again, there was nothing like the feeling of the wind whipping through her hair as she raced through the sky. And the diving, there was nothing like it that she had ever felt before.
...
Malfoy seized the package from Aurora and felt it. Aurora was starting to wonder if Malfoy's mother had ever taught him any manners because this was now the second time he had grabbed something that didn't belong to him out of the owner's hands.
"You are not the only one wondering that," Narcissa glared at her son.
"He wasn't much better in the common room," Blaise added.
"Blaise!" Draco shouted. "Can you pretend to be on my side for one chapter! Please!"
Blaise laughed, shaking his head no.
"He gets this from you," Narcissa said warningly, turning her glare to Lucius. Lucius shrunk back from her in fear.
"Comets look flashy, but they're not in the same league as the Nimbus."
"Now you're just challenging him to come back next year with a better broom," James, Sirius and Remus said.
The time travelers all laughed, 'they weren't wrong,' they all thought.
"I suppose you and your brothers have to save up twig by twig."
Molly and Arthur blushed brightly, while Fabian and Gideon looked at the two worriedly. They were making due with three kids, but they were about to have another two in the spring, and from the looks of it two more after the twins.
"And it's really thanks to Malfoy here that I've got it," she added.
"Well I hope this taught you a lesson," Narcissa scolded Draco.
"It really did," Draco commented. He was much more careful in the next couple of years about only doing things that would make Aurora look bad, not something that could turn in her favor.
Hermione was stomping up the stairs, looking disapprovingly at the package in Aurora's hand.
"Looking back on it, it really wasn't much of a reward," Hermione said.
At the curious looks from everyone she clarified, "Because of being on the team, Aurora lost a lot of her free time, plus she had to maintain an E average in classes, and with Potions being how it was she basically had to have O's in all her other classes, so the free time she did have she spent a good portion of it studying." The others in the room nodded in agreement, they could understand why making the team in their first year wouldn't be that great when put that way.
"Yea we didn't exactly have a lot of non-practice time after this year," Fred and Aurora grumbled.
"And as great as you are at the practical side of magic, your theory needs help," Amice added.
"That's one of the issues with having the amount of raw power that she has," Luna said.
Hermione marched away with her nose in the air.
Hermione smacked Ron and Aurora in the back of their heads with pillows, before imitating her younger self and sticking her nose up in the air.
Aurora had a lot of trouble keeping her mind on her lessons that day. It kept wandering up to the dormitory where her new broomstick was lying under Neville's bed,
"Why did you put it there?" James asked.
"Lavender and Pavarti had no sense of boundaries and liked to go through everyone's things," Hermione explained. "We ended up keeping most of our valuables in their room in our later years." This caused Lily and Alice to glare, they had a roommate like that, but they never thought of putting their things in the boys dorm. They might have to do that when they got out of this room. With Lily and Alice dating James and Frank they now had a reason to be in the boys dorm too.
"Yeah, Seamus and Dean really didn't care, so they left everything alone," Neville added.
rushed upstairs with Ron and Neville to unwrap the Nimbus Two Thousand at last.
"Wow," Ron sighed, as the broomstick rolled onto Neville's bedspread.
...
All the quidditch plays in the room sighed dreamily, a glazed look in their eyes.
They reminded Aurora of the little plastic sticks Muggle children blew bubbles through, except that they were fifty feet high.
"I thought that too the first time I saw them," Hermione, Lily, and Ted all said.
Too eager to fly again to wait for Wood, Aurora mounted her broomstick and kicked off from the ground. She flew up high above the goal posts and once she reached her peak, quickly turned her broom nose first to the ground. She could see almost in slow motion the ground approaching, but didn't pull up. She waited until she was no more than three feet from the ground and pulled hard on the broom, and leveled out, a whoop of excitement leaving her. She shot back into the air again.
"Wow!" The quidditch players all sighed.
"Your second time on a broom and you perform a perfect Wronski Feint!" James exclaimed.
"Do you play professionally?" Barty asked, very impressed with her flying ability.
"I've been asked to be on the national team, but I don't play for any of the regional British-Irish Leagues."
"Puddlemere and Holyhead both tried their best to recruit her but she's content playing for the national team in the upcoming world cup," Ginny said.
"I like my job," Aurora shrugged, not elaborating for the curious people staring at her.
team practice three times a week."
"That sounds reasonable," James said. "That's what I have the team at."
"Three times a week is tame for Oliver," Fred moaned.
stop the other team from scoring."
"Keeper's aren't usually the captains," James said. "He must be good."
"He was recruited to Puddlemere right after Hogwarts and was only on the reserve team for a year," Aurora said.
"He was also the only member of the team higher than a 3rd year," Fred elaborated.
"That's a young team," Remus whistled.
He handed Aurora a small club, a bit like a short baseball bat.
"He's not really going to release a Bludger on you is he?" Pandora asked.
"There's really no other way to learn what they do then to see it."
Aurora swung at it with the bat to stop it from breaking her nose, and sent it zigzagging away into the air —
"Well done Ro," Sirius complemented. "You would make a good beater."
"Better than McLaggen," Ginny giggled, setting the other travelers off too.
"Don't worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for the Bludgers — I mean, they're like a pair of human Bludgers themselves."
Fred stood and bowed, "Thank you. Thank you. The praise is much appreciated." Many of the people there laughed.
whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win.
"I would love to see a game where the person catching the snitch their team didn't win," the Marauders all sighed.
"It's pretty exciting," Hermione said. "And I'm not the biggest quidditch fan, I just watch for Ray and Ron and Ginny."
She understood what she had to do all right, it was doing it that was going to be the problem.
"Yes, catching the snitch is such a problem for you," Blaise snorted. "How many have you missed?"
Aurora just sniffed and turned away from him.
Aurora didn't miss a single one, and Wood was delighted. After half an hour, night had really fallen and they couldn't carry on.
"Well done Ro!" James and Sirius cheered.
he could have played for England if he hadn't gone off chasing dragons."
"Oh, why do my children have to have such dangerous jobs," Molly moaned, paling at the reminder that her son worked with dragons for a living.
The castle felt more like home than Privet Drive ever had. Her lessons, too, were becoming more and more interesting now that they had mastered the basics. The stares were also starting to die down. Cedric or the Weasley twins still showed up to escort her to almost all of her classes but the twins were no longer pranking anyone whose gaze lingered too long and Cedric was no longer glaring at everyone who dared to look at her.
"They take their job to protect you very seriously don't they," Andromeda asked.
"I wasn't without an escort between classes for my first two years. And then there was a situation in third year which made them even worse, and even earned me extra guards."
Professor Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice.
Aurora's partner was Neville, which both appreciated very much, neither wanting to work with Seamus who was known to set everything on fire without meaning to. Ron, however, was to be working with Hermione Granger.
...
never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest."
"That's not true!" Peter boasted. "We tried it and it didn't work."
Flitwick sighed fondly at the Marauders, "Of course you boys did."
It didn't seem very difficult. Aurora and Neville swished and flicked, but their feather barely moved off the table. Neville got so impatient that he prodded it with his wand and set fire to it — Aurora had to put it out with her hat, and jokingly called him Seamus.
...
"You do it, then, if you're so clever," Ron snarled.
"Oh never challenge the know it all's," Alice and Marlene groaned. "It never ends well for you."
Lily just laughed at her two friends.
"Everyone see here, Miss Granger's done it!"
Aurora and Neville, having had their feather replaced, managed shortly after Hermione to levitate their feather, along with Amice and Susan Bones who were partnered together, and two other Hufflepuff boys, who Aurora thought were named Justin and Ernie. Despite her best effort, Aurora hadn't made many friends outside of Gryffindor, and even though one of her best friends was a Hufflepuff, the house that touted loyalty and fair-play didn't seem very welcoming to Aurora, who had had all her efforts to befriend others in the house - outside the Diggory siblings - rebuffed by most of its members.
"Why?" Sprout asked, looking very confused.
"I honestly don't know," Amice said. "I know that some of the issues all the girls had with Ro had to do with the attention my brother paid to her. He was considered one of the catches of Hogwarts, especially as he got older."
"Her being sorted into Gryffindor was the biggest issue," Blaise explained. He was one of the outsiders so he saw and heard more than most. "Gryffindor was already thought to get special treatment from the Headmaster, so when Aurora was sorted into that house everyone just thought that it would get much worse. And it did." He glared at Dumbledore. "Things eventually calmed down when a lot of the people in other houses saw that Ro didn't ask for or want the attention." Here he glared at Draco. "But by then a lot of the damage had been done and Ro just gave up on making new friends unless they put in the effort first."
"That and I had a couple people trying to be my friend because I was famous and Fred and George, plus Cedric put a stop to that," Aurora added. "I eventually make friends with the other houses"
"she's a nightmare, honestly."
"Ronald!" Molly, Arthur, Fabian and Gideon yelled.
"I think she heard you." Aurora tried to go after the girl. As much as she wished that Hermione would calm down about things and realize that some people learned differently than she did, Aurora didn't want the girl's feelings to be hurt. Ron grabbed Aurora's arm though before she could go after the crying girl.
"Why did you stop her?" Pandora asked.
"I didn't mean to stop her," Ron assured. "She was about to run into a suit of armor."
"So?" said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. "She must've noticed she's got no friends."
"Ron!" Aurora scolded, pulling her arm out of Ron's grip. "I never had any friends before either." She quickly walked in the same direction that Hermione went.
Aurora couldn't find her and Hermione didn't turn up for the next class and wasn't seen all afternoon. Aurora would much rather be looking for Hermione than go celebrate Halloween but on their way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Aurora and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender that Hermione was crying in the girls' bathroom and wanted to be left alone. Ron looked still more awkward at this, but a moment later they had entered the Great Hall.
Until this last summer the only thing that Aurora had known about her parents was that they died on Halloween. She had never been allowed to trick or treat when she was younger, and she honestly had no wish to. She would rather think about how things would have been if she had parents. Then, since learning that she was a witch, Aurora was reading more about Samhain and Yule, and their importance in wizarding society and how they were being phased out of celebration in Wizarding Britain for holidays like Halloween and Christmas. But she didn't want to disappoint Ron and Neville so she joined the two for the Halloween feast instead of moping in the dorm, and put on a happy face.
"I hate Halloween," Aurora practically spat. The other travelers nodded sympathetically.
"But the feast is the best," Sirius argued. Aurora just shrugged, looking away.
"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"
"But Hufflepuff and Slytherin are in the dungeons!" Amos, Ted, Andromeda and Narcissa yelled, sending a glare at Dumbledore.
Percy was in his element. Aurora was worried though, why wouldn't they just be kept confined to the Great Hall. The Slytherins and the Hufflepuff dorms were in the dungeons. Surely it was safer for everyone to stay where they were and just have several of the teachers leave to deal with the troll.
"That is very sound logic Miss Potter," Amelia praised. "It would be the most effective thing to do as well."
"Maybe Peeves let it in for a Halloween joke."
"No. He knows the quickest way to being exorcized is to cause actual harm to the students," McGonagall explained.
"But Percy'd better not see us."
"YOU HAD TO THINK ABOUT IT!" Hermione shouted while attacking Ron with a pillow.
they saw not Percy but Snape. He crossed the corridor and disappeared from view.
"What are you doing Sev?" Lily asked.
Severus' head snapped up at the use of the old nickname. "I don't know," he softly replied.
a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seems to clean.
"It's not in the dungeons anymore," Remus announced. Lily whimpered and hid her head in James' shoulder.
"We could lock it in."
"Good idea," said Ron nervously.
"That is a rather good idea," Kingsley said.
"And like we said, Aurora has good ideas, they just never go to plan," Ron and Hermione grumbled.
"It's the girls' bathroom!" Aurora gasped.
"Hermione!" they said together.
All the women in the room looked to Hermione, as if to check and see if she was hurt.
Without any other thought, Aurora wheeled around, Ron right be her, they sprinted back to the door and turned the key, fumbling in their panic. Aurora pulled the door open and they ran inside.
"Why didn't you go get a teacher?" Sprout asked.
"There wasn't time, except for Snape, all the others were in the dungeons, and we were on the second floor." Ron answered.
At the news that they were on the second floor all the girls in the room groaned. It was a good bathroom to go cry in.
then made for her instead, lifting its club as it went.
"Oh no, oh no, oh no," Lily chanted. She had one of James' hands in a death grip, and was still hiding her face. James himself was looking rather pale, but trying his best to comfort Lily, despite his panic. Sirius had pulled Marlene close, and was rocking them back and forth, causing her to have issues reading.
Molly and Arthur were doing no better, both extremely worried for their youngest son.
"Come on, run, run!" Aurora yelled at Hermione, trying to pull her toward the door, but she couldn't move, she was still flat against the wall, her mouth open with terror. Honestly Aurora didn't blame her. If it wasn't for the adrenaline and the need to save Hermione, she might have been frozen if she was in the girls place.
"We all quickly get over that don't we," Ron tried to joke.
The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll berserk. It roared again and started toward Ron, who was nearest and had no way to escape.
Seeing that his mother looked about ready to faint, Ron walked over to her and sat on the floor next to her feet.
Aurora then did something that was both very brave and very stupid:
"Isn't that your motto in life," Blaise asked, laughing.
not knowing what he was going to do he heard himself cry the first spell that came into his head: "Wingardium Leviosa!"
"But you can't do that spell!" Alice cried out.
"Dangerous situations are great teachers. Besides, I had to get the club out of the troll's hands, he was doing so much damage with it, and it was the only thing that I could think of."
The club flew suddenly out of the troll's hand, rose high, high up into the air, turned slowly over — and dropped, with a sickening crack, onto its owner's head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.
"That was very well done," Arthur praised.
"Yes, very well done, that club would not have been light," Flitwick added his praise as well.
Ron beamed at them. He knew his dad was proud of him no matter what he did, but to earn praise from Flitwick who didn't hand his out very often was something new.
"Urgh — troll boogers."
"Ewww," Bill, Charlie and Dora all whined, scrunching their noses in disgust.
Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper, and sat quickly down on a toilet, clutching his heart.
"How can this man be the Defense teacher?" Columba questioned.
"He wasn't the worst we ever had," Draco replied. This did nothing to comfort any of the people in the room.
"Third year was our best teacher," Aurora added. "Fourth wasn't too bad at teaching, just the wrong person for the job."
The time travelers all laughed at Aurora's pun.
"I went looking for the troll because I — I thought I could deal with it on my own — you know, because I've read all about them."
"Why did you lie for them?" Lily asked. "You could have told the truth that you didn't know about the troll because you weren't at the feast."
"I didn't want them to get in trouble if anyone wanted to know why I wasn't at the feast."
"Not everyone goes to all the feasts," McGonagall explained. "The only mandatory ones are the beginning and end of the year."
"I didn't know that then," Hermione just shrugged.
Ron dropped his wand. Hermione Granger, telling a downright lie to a teacher? Why didn't she just tell the truth, that she hadn't been at the feast and Ron and Aurora had come to let her know about the troll.
...
Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble, though it was hardly their fault that the troll wasn't where they were told it was. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets.
The Marauders burst into laughter. Even Lily and Lucius had small smiles on their faces. They had been or were currently friends with Severus and even they couldn't imagine him passing out sweets.
"Mind you, we did save her."
"She wouldn't have needed saving if you hadn't made her cry earlier and then miss the feast," Pandora reminded him.
Hermione, however, stood alone by the door, waiting for them. There was a very embarrassed pause. Then, none of them looking at each other, they all said "Thanks," and hurried off to get plates, Neville wrapped an arm around Aurora, wondering where she had been. Fred and George Weasley were watching over the now quartet, small frowns on their faces, as they looked from the group to a bit of parchment, back and forth several times.
"Do you have?" James asked.
"We did," Fred answered.
"So my plan worked?" Sirius asked. Fred just nodded.
"What did you see that was causing the confusion?" Aurora whispered.
"Tom Riddle," Fred whispered back.
"What do you have that has James and Sirius so excited?" Marlene asked.
"Remus and Peter too from the looks of them," Lily said, pointing out the other two Marauders who seemed to be bouncing in their seats.
"Third book," Fred answered.
But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.
Marlene closed the book, and said, "That's the end of that chapter."
Remus reached over and took it from her. "I'll go next!"