Hogwarts Homerun 02

I stared at Professor McGonagall, my knees weak and my stomach churning. "What?" I asked hoarsely. "Two detentions?" I couldn't believe, no, I wouldn't believe it...

"Yes, Potter, two detentions. 50 points have been deducted from Gryffindor as well. Fighting is strictly against the rules." In her severity, Professor McGonagall looked like a caged lion, ready to roar. I decided that this was not a good time to push my luck. "Now go see Professor Dumbledore."

Slowly, feeling like a crushed warrior, I climbed to my feet, baseball glove in hand. In the light of my punishment, all happiness I felt in it was completely gone. My feet were leaden stones as I trudged across the floor to Professor Dumbledore's office. I had been in there several times on request from Professor Dumbledore himself. "Blood flavored lollipop," I remarked to the massive gargoyle upon reaching it. It tossed me a nod and leapt to the side.

"Ah, Mr. Potter. I just sent Mr. Snape away to Minerva! I understand that you two were fighting?" Professor Dumbledore asked when I reached his office, feet and heart heavy.

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Fighting is absolutely against the rules. But I'm sure Minerva's filled you in quite aptly. Why were you fighting, firstly?" Professor Dumbledore was missing the normal radiance in his sparkling blue eyes, but I could see it lurking in the edges, restrained and visibly fighting to come out.

"We were on the field first, Professor. We had every right to the field," I defended the Gryffindors.

"I'll admit that you're in the right there. But you weren't fighting over the field. I know that the field, not great as it is, is not that important to you. Why did you fight?" Professor Dumbledore looked at me keenly.

I gulped. "Snape...annoyed me...Professor." Even to my ears, it sounded lame. The disappointed look on Professor Dumbledore's face was like a punch to the stomach. I hate it when adults guilt you because you screwed up.

"You and Severus used to be friends, correct? Before Hogwarts?" There was that keen observing look again.

"Yes, we were," I said shortly, not wanting to talk about that subject. "Then he became a Slytherin. He snubbed me every time I went near him."

"The day when being different tears two friends apart completely grieves me." Professor Dumbledore stood up and tapped the surface to the desk with his long, spindly fingers, as if pondering something. He turned to me and looked at me in bemusement for a few seconds before saying, "Yes, I found out what I wanted to know, James. You may go." He didn't look like he would listen to anything, so I decided not to try to protest anything and left quietly, my footsteps silent on the thick carpeting. As I stepped around the massive gargoyle, hands grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me into an alcove.

Sirius, Remus, and Peter all stared at me with scared, hollow eyes. Sirius had a smudge of dirt along his cheek, making him look roughish. "Are you in trouble?" he asked, letting go of my shirt and backing up a step to give me some space. I supposed that I looked terrible. My face stung and my clothing was covered in dirt.

"Yeah," I replied. "McGonagall's not too thrilled with me."

"D'you think this'll mean that we can't go to the states this summer?" Peter asked nervously, plucking at the sleeve of his muggle shirt. Every summer, the four of us went to the United States, which was where we all found out about baseball. Bobby Rinoa's family owned some land there and he normally went with us. My parents took us to Boston, Washington DC, and New York City to see the Muggles behaviors and visit new wizarding communities for Dad's job. When Sirius and I and Severus went back when we were eight, we all three fell in love with baseball. But Severus joined Slytherin and grew quickly to detest the sport that he had been obsessed with. He'd been an awesome hitter, better than Sirius or I. I was the best pitcher, Sirius an unstoppable person with catching the ball, and Severus a great hitter.

"I don't think it'll cost us the trip," Remus replied sensibly. "I mean, Sirius has been in more fights than we can count and he still goes. This is James's first, after all."

Sirius nodded. "Though you might want to go see Ms. Pomfrey about all that..."

"It's Madam Pomfrey," Peter corrected instantly. Sirius, who had incorrectly said her name just to spite Peter, grinned. We started to walk, surprising a couple of first-years as we exited the alcove. "So, what did Dumbledore want?"

"He asked me about my years before Hogwarts," I said uncomfortably. I twitched my left shoulder and Sirius got the message.

"That was so awesome the way you took down Severus. He didn't know what hit him!" Sirius congratulated me, driving the subject away. Within moments of talking about the fight, the subject was long-gone.



***



"Safe!"

Sirius jumped up from home plate, striking the air with a triumphant fist. "Ha!" he shouted at me, standing on pitcher's mound with an air of slight defeat. "Didn't get it there fast enough, buddy!"

"I'm aware of that!"

Sirius grabbed his glove and trotted out to the outfield, switching places with Aubran, who was up to bat. We were short an outfielder because Sirius normally played third base and Adrien was on third base and Aubran was up to bat. He raised the bat over his shoulder and gave me a stare with weird aqua-blue eyes. His blond hair lay flat against his scalp and his pale skin, splattered with a few freckles on his face, burned easily.

"Let's actually hit it this time!" Ketumn, his twin brother, shouted, smacking his hand into his glove. The two looked nothing alike. Aubran was taller, with broader shoulders, but Ketumn had burnished brown hair that curled slightly at his temples and clear blue eyes. He had no freckles, but his skin didn't burn so easily. (A/N to Autumn: don't kill me for this, please, I was just out of names!!)

"Yeah, c'mon!" Bobby shouted, relying heavily on his American accent. "We haven't got all day! Pitch the ball!"

I leaned back and let Aubran have it. Eyes narrowed, he swung the bat and...

"Strike One!"

"C'mon, Aubran, it's on a baseball! You can hit this!" Ketumn taunted as I caught the ball. It was an ongoing thing between the twins to pick on each other.

Aubran moved heavily into the swing as I pitched it a second time and sent it rocketing away. Ketumn snapped his fingers in disappointment and moved to block the base path between second and third. He was second baseman, so he and Remus talked a lot during the game. Aubran shoved right through him, but he shoved back.

"Come on, guys, break it up!" Remus shouted, throwing himself between the two of them. They were both shorter than he was, so he put a hand on each of their foreheads and held both of them away from him at arms length. Remus looked annoyed at them, but we all started laughing.

"Let's get back to playing!" Peter shouted, trying to get our attention. But we were all too busy laughing at the twins to pay attention to him, so he pulled his mask over his face with a sigh and squatted back into position. Eventually, Remus took his place at the plate and gave me an intense stare that was intended to intimidate me. It didn't.

"Give me your hardest, James!" he shouted.

"What do you think?" I called to Sirius. "Think I should give it to him soft?"

Sirius shrugged. "Sure, why not?" We both grinned at Remus, who rolled his eyes at us and twitched the bat. After I had moved my shoulder so that it was loose again, I reeled back and let it fly. Remus missed. "Strike One!"

"I'd like to see if the wolf-boy can hit the ball," a voice sneered. "That is what you're named after, isn't it, Romulus?"

Remus gritted his teeth again, trying desperately to ignore Snape. His twin brother, Romulus, had died when he was eight, killed by the same werewolf that turned Remus into a monster himself, and Remus missed him dreadfully. Snape had no idea that Remus was a werewolf; in turn, he had no idea that we were all becoming Animagi to help our friend out. When we weren't playing baseball, we were reading, researching, and mixing potions for the full draft. Peter was catching on very slowly.

"Come on, Romulus, hit the ball!"

Snape was standing maybe five feet behind Peter, sneering with all his might and trying to get Remus to turn and beat his face in. Remus, with his lanky form, really wouldn't have had any trouble, but, being the pacifist that he was, I knew that he wouldn't. Snape did, too, and used it to his advantage.

"Pitch the ball, James," Sirius hissed to me. "Go high, over Peter's head. Smash Snape's face with it. You're good enough to do that, right?"

I nodded barely perceptibly and prepared to throw the ball again.

I was fully intending to throw the ball to Peter for Remus to hit, but I think Sirius had already guessed that and had a backup plan in mind for it. As I let the pitch loose, he whipped out his wand and shouted something. Instants later, a rubber chicken shot through the air and smacked Snape straight in the face. Snape stood there, a shocked look on his face as the chicken fell to his feet, thunking lightly against the ground. The sound, however, was masked by every Gryffindor on the field.

I froze. Severus Snape, my one-time friend, turned to me and looked at me with a mixture of pity, a plea for help, and disgust in me. It clearly told me that he was ashamed of the prank that I'd helped pull on him. Then the look was gone, as quickly as it had come. "Okay, Gryffindogs, this means war," I heard Snape whisper before he calmly turned and walked off, fueled by the harsh laughter I kept thinking about when it had been Snape, Sirius, and I. We would have pulled that prank a million times.

I just didn't like to see one of the original trio on the receiving end of it.

I didn't like it at all.



***



"James, I've got bad news."

I was hunched double over my Potions essay, working furiously on it. The situation with Severus Snape, Sirius Black, and James Potter was bothering me more than I would have liked to admit. My playing during quidditch practice had been seriously bad because I was brooding over that problem.

Sirius was showing Peter a passage he had found out of Hogwarts, so I had time to brood in private. Remus had been in our dormitory, working on his homework, but now he was out in the Common Room with bad news.

"What is it?" I asked, rolling the essay up. People kept claiming that I was pretty smart, but I just retained knowledge easier. If I paid attention in class, passing the test was not a problem.

"Friday starts the full moon," Remus said in a low voice, looking around as he sat down. He brushed his long bangs out of his eyes and looked at me. "I'm going to have to miss the baseball and quidditch games."

"What?" I asked in horror. "We've got just enough players to play the full game!"

"I know, but I've gotta go to the Shrieking Shack! I can't not go. That'd be disastrous!" Remus's eyes were wide with disappointment and frustration with his werewolf problem.

"It's okay, we've got three days, I'm sure we'll find somebody," I said, just to console myself. Inwardly, I was in shock. Who were we going to use? There were no Gryffindor boys left! We couldn't ask any of the brains, Ravenclaw, to join in! Half of them didn't even know what the word baseball meant!

But Remus's problem still couldn't shove the regrets I was having about giving up my friendship with Severus away, no matter if it was he that ended the friendship in the first place. For the first time in my years at Hogwarts, I was feeling like scum.

"Listen, I've gotta go tell Sirius," Remus told me, jerking his thumb in the direction that Sirius and Peter were in. "You'd better get that essay done."

"I will, I will," I replied, hiding my eyes as I unrolled the parchment again and got back to writing. Later that night, when I fell asleep, the look Severus had given me after being hit in the face with a rubber chicken haunted my dreams.



***



"Who are we going to find? The game's tomorrow!" Sirius said as the team met around the pitcher's mound for our final practice. His blue eyes were wide with worry.

"I don't know, I'm trying to think!" I said, grabbing at my hair.

Bobby Rinoa came in with "We could always ask a Hufflepuff. They're pretty good at this stuff."

"They wouldn't know the word baseball if we told them what it meant!"Sirius replied, rolling his eyes.

"I hear you're all looking for a new player. Care if I try out?" came a soft soprano voice from all of us.

I turned slowly to see the redhead that had simply come to have herself known as Lily. She refused to go by her last name for some strange reason, so we all ended up forgetting it. She was wearing muggle clothing and holding a worn baseball glove in her hand. "One moment," Aubran Sapling said hastily and we all pulled back into our huddle.

"What do you think? Should we let her play?" I asked, looking around.

"She's a girl, James," Sirius hissed.

"Sirius, are you or are you not thirteen years old?" Remus asked, rolling his eyes with a manner of annoyance about him.

"I am."

"Then act your age!" Remus replied sharply. Sirius didn't say anything back.

After a few seconds of debating, we came up with an answer. "Tell you what," I said, turning to Lily. "We'll give you a trial round."

In the half hour that passed, Lily wiped clean every thought of girls playing baseball that Sirius had ever had. She scooped up the ball when hit to her and flung it at me with the might of a steel hammer. Half of the time, it hurt my glove hand. And she knocked a home run instantly when it was her turn up to bat. Within instants, she was a favorite on the team.

"What do you say? Am I on?" Lily asked as we all trotted off the field, feeling the strange euphoria that came along with a faith in a new astounding teammate.

Sirius was not going to admit the error in his comments, so I just nodded to save his dignity. Fortunately, Lily was very discreet and said nothing to him about it. However, she approached me on one subject that I didn't want to talk about.

"James, all this week you've been ... well, lost in all the classes. What's bothering you? You never drift off in Transfiguration!" Lily looked at me, her green eyes plainly worried. I blinked. Nobody was that perceptive. But then I remembered who Lily was. She was top of the class and very popular because she was said to actually care about the people around her.

"It's nothing," I said, my voice suddenly gruff. "Nothing at all. Or, at least, nothing that I want to talk about."

Unlike anybody else, Lily didn't press me to find an answer out of me. She just shrugged and said, "Okay, but if you ever want to talk, I'll listen."

And in those simple words, Lily had somehow managed to pry herself into my life.

She came with Sirius, Peter, and I to wave Remus off, not knowing about his secret and thinking it was just to see his sick mother. Sirius wasn't too fond of her at first but she grew on him the way she did on all people. Soon, we all found ourselves discussing on how bad we were going to beat the Slytherins. Lily just seemed to meld completely into our group, though she left a bit earlier to go meet up with a few friends. When I went to bed that night, I had a whole new set of emotions crushing me. And I couldn't get Severus's haunted face out of my mind.



***



A/N: Okay, that was a really bad place to end it, but I have to. Really crappy ending. The third (and last) part to come soon. School has gotten me really stressed, in case you can't tell by this fic. I will resume writing Hogwarts, A History, after this is all over. To the person that demanded Lily be in this fic, here she is. I might add romance later, but might I also note that they're thirteen? I'm a hopeless romantic, I know, but that's a little much for me.



Disclaimer: Standard for Harry Potter. I don't own the name Rinoa, but I am going to own the names Aubran and Ketumn, so don't take them.