A/N: Anyanka00 is brilliant. So huzzah to her. Its been forever since I updated because of horrible school and such, but please please please please please please REVIEW!!!
After class that day, our beloved Marauders went back to their common room. James, Remus and Peter were talking among themselves, arguing about Quidditch. Usually Sirius would have gladly joined in, but he was staring darkly ahead, as they walked past the giant staircase.
"The Arrows definately will
win. Have you even SEEN McGuire as Beater? He's deadly." James waved his
arms emphatically, although he was walking slowly and slightly bowleggedly. Peter asked him why he was walking so...monkey-like.
James grimaced and rolled his eyes.
"Quidditch, huh?" Remus snickered.
"Uggh. We had to
practice ALL MORNING long...our beaters are NOT working together well. There's
no way they will get their acts together before the next game."
"Against Hufflepuff, right?
They're pretty good, I heard, since Jerry Finn joined." Peter said.
"And you did manage to beat Slytherin. Of
course...that was before Ginfield had to
quit..."
"Theres no way The Arrows will beat the Wasps,
James. You know that." Remus said, going back to
their original topic.
"A Slytherin!"
This came from Sirius. The other three turned to him wearily, resigned to their
fate.
"There he goes," muttered James.
He, Remus and Peter patiently ignored Sirius'
energetic enumeration of his Potions problems. He finally shut up when they
reached the portrait of the Fat Lady.
They sat down at a table in the Common Room and prepared to have a game of
wizard's chess. Sirius' sulkiness abated somewhat as he settled down to play
against Remus, who beat him in twenty moves. Sirius
decided (like he usually did when he lost) that he didn't like chess, and
instead played with the chess pieces. He named one of the pawns "Snape" and concentrated his efforts on having the other
pieces beat up that pawn. Remus, James, and Peter
applauded.
: : :
Another day, another potions class. James and his Gryffindor partner Ariadne sat down at the table behind Sirius and Victoria.
Sirius interspersed whistling and singing the song "You can't always get
what you want" by the Rolling Stones under his breath as Victoria collected the ingredients from the cupboard in the
back. James heard him and rolled his eyes.
"You can't always get what you wannn-annnt. You
can't always get what you wannn-annnt."
Victoria walked up, her arms full of nasty potion ingredients
like eye of frog and crushed lemon. "Some help, maybe, you-who-are-a-git?"
"You can't always get what you wannn-annt,"
sang Sirius, ignoring her.
Victoria leaned over and snapped the next line of the song
back at Sirius. "'But if you try sometimes, you might find,
you get what you need.' Now, damnit, give me some
help if you don't want me to make you purposely FAIL this Potions
assignment."
Sirius
looked amazed that a girl would snap at him instead of drooling and sighing. He
was also slightly annoyed at having been snapped at.
James smirked and contributed a couple lines of the Rolling Stones song too, as
Sirius got up off his arse and walked past James'
table to go to the cupboard. "And I went down to the demonstration, to get my
fair share of abuse, right Padfoot?" Sirius cuffed
him upside the head.
Sirius brought the rest of the ingredients to the table and sat at his stool,
slightly less sulky. The two of them finished their potion fairly quickly, and
Sirius spent the rest of the class period drawing an exaggerated caricature of Snape, wearing a dress, instead of starting the essay that
was their homework: "Write 18 inches on the differences between the
Sleeping Draught and the Dreamless Sleep Potion, with an extra three inches of
footnotes, to be handed in Thursday."
When his quill broke, he barked at Victoria to hand him his bag so he could get another.
"Uh-huh. Haven't we decided that you should stop sitting on your lazy arse and actually GET things for yourself sometimes?" Victoria replied, not looking up from the note she was writing
to some Slytherin friend of hers sitting across the
room.
Sirius rolled his eyes and reached over her to grab his bag. He shifted his
other hand to his pocket to get out his wand, planning to make the legs of her
chair disappear. Before his wand was out, however, she stood up and hissed:
"Okay. You're gonna be my bloody partner for the
next, what, month? Semester? You don't like me.
Because I'm a Slytherin, all right? I get it. You
claim to be more "open-minded" and yet act like a complete ASS. Let's pretend
to get along so we don't fail this damn class. And how in hell did you get to
be such a bloody 'pranks master' when you are so damned obvious? Ever heard of
subtle?" Sirius sat there, dumsquizzled.
James,
who had been explaining the essay to his partner, looked up and snickered. "Fair share of abuse, Padfoot,
right? And really. She's right. Subtle, much?"
Sirius was astonished to find out that there was a girl at Hogwarts who had the
nerve to stand up to him, instead of swooning at his every word. He fought back
the smile rising to his lips, gave James a punch, and proceeded to draw him in
a dress as well.
So over the next couple weeks, Sirius and Victoria actually ended up working
well together, although Sirius bickered as much with her as he did with James.
Often, Sirius tried to steal potions ingredients to "experiment with"
in the dormitory and while Victoria
would threaten to tell Professor Austin, she never did actually tell. She would
give him suggestions of different potions that he could "accidentally make" and
often would find the ingredient lists for him. Once, she helped gather the
ingredients for a potion that would make the drinker only speak troll. They
nearly cracked both ribs laughing at Professor Austin's irritation and Snape's astonishment as he spent an entire Potions class
pointing and grunting.
Peter once commented on Sirius' lack of hatred for her, and he would only say
"The sorting-hat probably just made a mistake."
It was about a month before Christmas and the night after the full moon. Remus was asleep in the hospital wing and Peter, James and
Sirius tried not to fall asleep into their mashed potatoes and gravy. Sirius
and James were talking about a spell James had found, that would cause a
person's nose hair to grow in ringlets, something which they could potentially
experiment on Snape. Peter gave up trying to
participate in this intellectual conversation and fell asleep on the table.
Lily, who was sitting next to James, snickered.
"So. James. The Winter
dance. I sort of need to know if we are going together, 'cause
we go to Hogsmeade next weekend and I need to get
dress-robes," Lily said.
"Dance?" James asked, blearily, rubbing his
eyes.
"The Yule Ball! How can you be head-boy and not
know about the dance?" Lily rolled her eyes.
"'Cause Head boy and girl don't organize the dance,
bright one. The other mini-prefects do." James put his head down on
the table, on his arms, muffling his words slightly.
Lily pinched him to make him look up. "Yes, but it was decided at the same
meeting that we were at."
"Like I paid attention. Anyway, yes, would you
like to go with me? Whenever this dance is….?"
"The
Friday before we break up. December 20th." Sirius said through
a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
"Yes, I would love to go with you, and Sirius, how would you know that,
when James didn't?" asked Lily. Sirius rolled his eyes and took another
huge bite of his dinner.
"Been asked three times already. They would have
asked you Jimbo, I'm sure, don't worry, except that
they all think you're engaged to this fit creature here." He indicated
Lily. "Even Remmy-kins got asked by your buddy Ariadne Perkins. I'm without a mate in this lonely world."
He sighed dramatically.
"Yes, well, since I'm sure you turned them all down, no wonder you're
without a mate," James said. "You did turn them down, I
presume?"
"I'm not gonna go to a dance with someone whose
brainless and annoying and just thinks I'm sexy although it's true. And since
lovely Lily is taken, I suppose I'll go stag." He grinned. "Stag!" He started laughing at his own cleverness.
James rolled his eyes.
***
A/N: fyi, we changed ernestina's name to ariadne just for the heck of it. So yes. Now click on the thing that says review….come on u've got this far…
