A/N: Unfortunately
my betas are out of town, (or were when I wrote this, but then ff.net went down
the day I was going to post!) so my brother proofed this not them. So, thank you brother. J And he also gave me a few pointers
in this chapter, so thanx again to him.
And of course, thank you all of you who have reviewed.
New York
Times: As
requested, I'm thanking you first.
You'd better be happy. I hope that
you keep reading, because I really enjoy your reviews. Jinskid3: I'm glad that you like. I'll try.
*Chocolate Frogs*: I love
long chapters; I'm glad that you do too. I'm glad you like Stallion; I like him
too. And now you've gone and given it
away about Aeris. Jeez! Super saya-Jin Goten: Wow, I like the song. No one's ever sung to me in a review
before. I kinda like it. I'm delighted that you like it so much. Just a guess, but you like DBZ, huh? Luna*Star: Thanx. Sakura: Sorry, maybe I should have continued
with the conversation, since that was everybody's fav part. But it had to end sometime. I'm glad you like it too. Flamin Phoenix: Thanx. I'll try and post seven pretty soon. Sorry that six took so long, stupid
ff.net! Jeff: Thanks a lot. See if I come to your birthday
party. Nah I'm just kidding. Rons_Mine: Biscuits? Oh, you're
talking about the crackers, right?
Sorry, I'm American so I really don't know all the British words. Everybody loves the conversation with the
can, including me! Fairlight: Thanks.
Rain93: Thanx. I will.
Milkyweed: Thank
you. I will. Sailor Galaxie: I
will, I'm glad. Thanks. I know, the hat's great. The best thing in my fic, I'm sure. James and Sirius: I'm a little disappointed with you. That was pretty much an email! You didn't say a thing about my fic. How sad.
But still, thanx for the thought, I guess.
Disclaimer: Really and truly I'm tired of these
things. I think this will be my last
one! (Yeah, right) Anywho, nothing from
the Harry Potter books is mine and some of the names don't belong to me either.
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Chapter Six – Chocolate and Strawberries
As soon as "Zrelly, Vapory"
was made a Gryffindor, McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took Stallion and
the stool away. She had grabbed
Stallion a little forcefully, and James was once again sorry for his hat of a
friend.
Looking at the empty golden
plate in front of him and forgetting all about Stallion, James' stomach rumbled
softly, and reminded him that he hadn't eaten since the pretzel hours ago. He was starving. Why hadn't he made Lily share all the things she bought off the
cart? She had gotten ten chocolate frogs, and she had eaten them all herself,
not sharing even when Sirius asked her.
Or why hadn't he at least bought something for himself? What was he, stupid or something? Wait, don't answer that,
he told his self-conscience.
Dumbledore stood and began speaking, "I have a little speech
that I give every year," his blue eyes twitched in the direction of James and
Sirius. Sirius' stomach growled loudly
causing all of the Gryffindor and half the Ravenclaw students to look at him;
many smiled and some voiced their agreement with his stomach. Dumbledore smiled and continued, "But I can
see the hunger in your eyes and hear your stomachs protesting, so I will give
it after you have all been fed and watered." Dumbledore waved his hand and the
empty plated became full of wonderful foods.
James started stuffing himself
immediately. He soon had four plates worth of food
stacked on his one plate so it was a tower of pork chops, potatoes, steak, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding
and every other imaginable food desirable, and even some not desirable. Unfortunately, he had been foolish enough to
but his jello by his ribs, and now they looked uneatable. James stuffed them in his mouth anyway. Not too bad really. James had been really looking forward to
dining like this three times a day. His
mom hated cooking and usually just let them feed themselves with stuff around
the house, but this food was wonderful.
As they were eating, Sirius
started a conversation with Aeris. "So,
who are you?" he asked spraying her with mashed potatoes.
"Aeris Lorie," she said wiping
the gravy off her forehead where Sirius had hit her.
"Well, we heard that much,"
Sirius told her.
"Oh," she said blushing. "What else do you want to know?"
"Where ya from and stuff like
that?"
"I'm from London, England."
"Oh. We know what country London is in; we are British you know. Well, how many people do you have in your
family and such?"
"I have a mother and a
father," she began.
"Oh that's good. Because if you had two of one and none of
the other, we would start to worry," Sirius stated. Aeris started giggling hysterically, and everyone looked at her
as if she had grown two heads and her hair had turned purple.
"It wasn't that funny," James
stated.
Aeris looked as if she were
trying to calm down, and failing terribly.
She just couldn't stop smiling.
Lily looked at her new friend and started patting her on the back, and
whispering in her ear.
"Girls," muttered James,
rolling his eyes.
Once Aeris was breathing
normal again, Sirius said, "Continue."
He sounded so business-like that it almost caused her to burst into
laugher all over again. She was
obviously a very happy person.
"Well, I have two older
brothers. One already graduated from
Hogwarts, last year. He is working for the
ministry now." Seeing the confused look
on Lily's face she added, "The Ministry of Magic," Lily nodded, as if she had
known all along. "He is engaged to be
married, and will be on July 19, next year.
He's going to marry Malaya Jones.
She is the same age as him. My
next brother is Aken. He's in his third
year this year. He's on the Hufflepuff
Quidditch team and he's the
Keeper. I have one little sister who
is three years younger than I am. Her
name is Julian, well she's…"
"Okay, more about your family
than I wanted to know. I was only asking a polite question, to start a
conversation with a cute girl. If I had
wanted you to write me a book, I would have asked!" Sirius said holding his
hand over her lips to stop her from going on.
Aeris blushed a deep red and
muttered touching her lips were he had, "Oh, sorry."
"Don't apologize to him! He's the one who should be apologizing to
you! He's the one being a prat here,"
Lily said, enraged.
"It's not that big of a deal,"
Aeris mumbled.
"Yes it is." Lily said,
standing up. "He gets enough attention
as it is!"
"Lily," James said. "By
yelling at him, you're only drawing more attention to him." James waved his hand at the rest of the
Gryffindor table, most of which were watching either Sirius or Lily.
"Oh," Lily said softly,
sitting back down in her seat. She
didn't say anything again until the meal disappeared and the deserts replaced
them.
"Ooh! Chocolate-dipped strawberries. My favorite!" Lily exclaimed, scaring
everyone since they were used to her silence.
"Gross. I hate those things. My mum made 'em when I was three, and hasn't
made 'em since because I hated 'em so much.
Well, then again, they just might have been disgusting because my mum's
not much of a cook, but I like to think that they are always nasty, not just
when my mum makes them," James said, stuffing his face with some of the
chocolate éclairs.
"Well I like
them," Lily stated.
"I never said you didn't."
James was still eating deserts as if his life depended on it.
"But you called them gross."
"Yup. I admit it.
I did. And I only speak the
truth."
"You're such a pig!" Lily told
James who had food all over his face.
"Ha! Pig! That reminds
me. Did any of you know that the
Sorting Hat has a name? Its name is Stallion."
"And pig reminded you of that,
how?" questioned Aeris.
"To make a long story short;
his Beauxbatons and Durmstrang hat buddies, named him that. Drum (Durmstrang) came up with it. I can't remember it exactly, but it was
something like, Hogwarts to Hog; hog to pig; pig to swine; and then swine
somehow went to Clyde, and that to Clydesdale.
I don't know how, but now his name is Stallion."
"That doesn't even make any
sense." Aeris said with a silly shake of the head. "They should have named him
Belgian. Yeeaahh!"
"But that still
doesn't make any sense." Said James with an exasperated look on his face.
"What. It makes perfect sense.
Belgian? BELGIAN?? Don't you get it? When you shorten Belgian what do you get?"
James gave her a questioning
look…"I dunno. What?"
Everyone stared at Aeris,
Waiting…Waiting…
"Urg… Don't ya get it? I don't believe this!!!" she then slammed
her head against the table right into her pudding.
"Uh, Urg lives very far from
here." Said Remus with an all-knowing look.
"Yeah, and that still
didn't make any sense," added James.
Aeris glared at James, the chocolate pudding dripping from her bangs
(A/N: fringe) into her blue eyes, and then turned to talk to Sirius instead. He might only talk to her because she was
pretty, but at least he didn't insult her… very often.
They continued to eat in
almost silence (as close as you can get with three crazy boys and two…normal
girls) for the next minute or two, and then Lily spoke.
"James? So you don't like strawberries and chocolate?"
"Nope. Not together anyway."
"Then take this!" and with
that, she flipped her spoon at him, which contained two strawberries dipped in
steaming hot chocolate.
The furious James (with
burning chocolate dripping off his nose, and one strawberry down the front of
his robes) scooped up several rock hard peppermint cakes and flung them at
Lily. Only two of the seven hit her,
the others hit five unsuspecting people.
The first one hit a very tall
Ravenclaw head girl in the forehead, leaving a red welt. The second one hit Chez Dagget square in the
middle of the back. The third and
fourth stray peppermint cakes hit two older Gryffindors that James didn't know.
Ah but the fifth one, the
fifth one was the grand finale. The
fifth one hit Severus Snape right on his large, sloping nose, causing it to
start bleeding immediately. Severus yelled out in pain.
James and Sirius of course
started to laugh at the sight of the git holding his huge nose, and having
blood oozing from in-between his fingers.
In fact, they were laughing so hard, that James continued to laugh even
after Chez dumped a bowl of ice-cream down the back of his robes.
James was still laughing (and
laughed harder) when Seifer (with what looked like caramel dripping from his
dreadlocks) stood on the table and yelled, "Food Fight!" as he flung some
cheesecake at Kaki Pun, who was sitting across from him. Kaki screamed and threw the remainder of her
banana pudding at Seifer, missing completely and hitting Remus – who was seven
people away from Seifer, in the face.
Remus shrugged and stood on
the table holding a plate filled with gooey dessert in each hand. "Food Fight!" he repeated. Remus chucked the plates across the room,
most of the treats hitting some screaming Hufflepuff girls. One of the plates hit Snape's already blood
gushing nose (James and Sirius by this time were rolling on the floor about to
pee their pants) and the other hit some Slytherin third year, whose hair was so
blonde it was almost white, in the stomach.
And so the food fight raged
on. James soon recovered and joined in,
but the first cream custard he threw hit Snape and so Sirius -who then began
laughing all over again- was therefore unable to join in until it was too late. Just when he had returned to
his normal, messed up self, and was about to throw the remains of his chocolate
cake, when Professor McGonagall put a hand on his shoulder and said, "I
wouldn't do that. You're in enough
trouble as it is."
Sirius threw the cake anyway,
but McGonagall didn't even notice. She
had advanced on James.
"James Potter! Detention!
Tomorrow! At nine, with
Professor Ethan!" James smiled and turned to face McGonagall. He turned fast enough that some of the food
that was sticking to his body was flung off of him and hit McGonagall in the
face. He started to laugh, but stopped
at the look she gave him. She was
boiling mad. "POTTER! You will have another detention right after
the first one is finished, with me!"
"Yes ma'am," James said
saluting her as if he were in the army spraying her with more food.
"Dang," Sirius muttered under
his breath. "Sirius one. James two."
Dumbledore stood up and
cleared his throat. The hall became
practically silent almost immediately.
That was fairly simple seeing as how the loudest in the hall (Sirius and
James-who else?) had already been silenced.
Dumbledore cleared his throat softly again, and the hall was completely
hushed.
"I can see that most of you
want to get to your dormitories and get all cleaned up, however, I do still
have a few things to say.
"The Forbidden Forest is to
live up to its name, and be forbidden to all students. Should I repeat that, or did
everyone hear me. The Forbidden Forest
is forbidden."
"Can't come up with very
original names here at Hogwarts, can they?" whispered Sirius to James, who
smiled but stopped himself from laughing. "They should have named it, 'The
Forest of Death.'"
"Maybe that's not very
original either because the reason it is forbidden is because there are deadly
things in there."
"Still, if they aren't going
to come up with an original name, they might as well use a good not
very original name."
McGonagall looked at them
sternly but said nothing. Dumbledore
continued after he had finished eyeing the Gryffindor table, looking at a
distinctive fifth year in particular. "Quidditch trails will be held in two weeks. If there are any second years or above
interested in playing for their house team, they should contact Madam Hooch."
"I wish first years could
join. I'd be the first on the list,"
James muttered to Sirius. Sirius
nodded, but didn't mention that he wasn't very good at Quidditch. That didn't stop him from playing it and
loving it; he just didn't think that he would be able to make the team,
especially without making a fool of himself and falling off his broom several
times.
"And finally, I must tell you
all that a Whomping Willow has been planted on the grounds, and I warn you all
to stay away from it. Those of you who
studied them in Herbology last year know what they can do to you, and the rest
of you; just trust the others and don't go near it.
"Usually we would sing the
school song right now, but I can see few of you are feeling up to that. Now, go clean up and go to bed."
James turned to look at all
his friends. He could hardly see Remus'
face, but from what he could see, he looked absolutely sick. "Remus, you
alright?"
"Yes, I'm fine. I just had a bad experience with a Whomping
Willow that's all." His face turning a bright red, he ran and caught up with
the prefect who was leading them to the Gryffindor common room.
"Wonder what's up with him?"
asked Sirius as they filed out of the Great Hall.
"Me
too."