The Marauders' Years: Year One

Chapter Seven

Marauders Minus One


"Wake up, Remus." James mumbled as he dragged himself out of bed.

Almost every Gryffindor had stayed up half the night talking about the attack on the Ravenclaw girl and watching the prefects mill about. Philip tried to sneak out to see the girl, but a prefect caught him and pitched a fit over not obeying the rules.

Sirius threw a pillow at Remus's head when he didn't stir, but missed and hit Peter instead, which earned a retaliation strike.

After the pillows stopped flying, they managed to get Remus up with the help of Frank, then the first year boys headed off to Potions class, rather grumpy over missing breakfast.

-

Professor Hikage, who not only headed Slytherin house, but also taught Potions was a tall, wiry man with a bad temperament towards students and a semi-permanent scowl on his face. He didn't seem to like anyone, and only favored Slytherins slightly. The Professor usually got in an even worse mood than usual when things went wrong. He was in a rather sour mood when James and the rest of his fellow first year Gryffindors came in.

"Take your seats," Professor Hikage snapped irritably.

Not wanting to bring his wrath down upon them too quickly, everyone complied with his order. Sirius and James gave the Professor a mock salute before they seated themselves, but luckily, he didn't notice.

"We were going to be working in the classroom across the way," he began with his characteristic scowl firmly in place. "But I'm afraid Miss Bertha Jorkins was her usual air-headed self and Mr. Filch has not yet managed to clean up her careless mistake."

Everyone glanced at one another; dismayed that class was to be worse than usual.

"I trust," The Professor continued. "That none of you shall blow up a simple Calming Potion when you reach fifth year...If you manage to reach it, that is."

When no one answered, he scowled even more and went to start writing the ingredients for a Mesmori Draught on the blackboard.

"I'm going to fail," Peter stated quietly, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Remus rolled his eyes and shoved his ingredients towards Peter. "Use mine, I'll use yours."

"Add that one next, Peter," James warned, pointing toward the carefully measured amount of beetle eyes. "Otherwise it'll blow up."

"And that'll be a ruddy shame," Frank agreed. "Because the professor will give us all detention and not just you."

"Blow up? How?" Sirius whispered excitedly. "How do you make a little memorization potion blow up?"

"I hope that you five are discussing what a Mesmori Draught does, and not the latest Quidditch scores," Hikage said in a low dangerous voice, apparently he had crept up behind them.

James put on his most winning smile, "Funny, that was what we were discussing! It's to aid in memorization."

Professor Hikage gave them an angry glare before stalking off to berate Alice on the frothing potion her friends were trying to help her put right.

The class seemed to drag on forever until they finally had a chance to head off for a quick lunch.

-

When the five boys finally entered the Great Hall, they were starving and quickly set to the immense task of devouring as much food as humanly possible before Transfiguration started. Not one of them talked during lunch, and it passed too fast even so. Reluctantly, they all grabbed their books, and headed off for Transfiguration.

-

Transfiguration was one of Sirius's favorite subjects. Professor McGonagall, Professor M., as James had dubbed her, often used animals in her class. Sirius thought his one goal in class should be rescuing the various creatures so in preparation for this he always sat by the window.

"Today's class," McGonagall began crisply. "Is student inspired. Those of you who paid attention know that it was up to you to submit an idea for today's lesson. Many were...interesting," She glanced toward James and Sirius, who both grinned brightly. "It was a difficult decision, but I chose Miss Lily Evans's idea."

Lily blushed as the rest of the class clapped.

"Miss Evans, explain your lesson please."

Nervously, Lily made her way to the front of the room. "Umm...right. I thought maybe we could try Transfiguring magical creatures into Muggle items. It should be interesting."

The looks on the students' faces ranged from mild interest to excitement. Many of the students were from Wizarding families hadn't seen many Muggle items.

"I was thinking...maybe we could transfigure some hamsters (Sirius looked very interested at this.) into a book written by Shakespeare, it's a play called 'Hamlet'. It's rather simple to transfigure something with a similar name, but it's rather difficult if you've never even seen the book, so I brought my copy..."

It was almost like having a mini-McGonagall teaching. Lily showed everyone her own copy of the Muggle book and soon the entire class was attempting to turn the un-co-operative rodents into hardcover books with limited success due to the fact that Sirius kept using 'Accio' to free their hamsters, then fit them with minuscule broom sticks and toss them out of the open window. He quickly earned a detention for disrupting the class, needless to say.

Soon the class was over and everyone left with their own copy of 'Hamlet', thoroughly pleased with how the class had turned out. They had feared what kind of lesson Potter or Black would come up with.

-

"I need to go to the hospital wing..." Remus announced quite suddenly on the way to dinner.

Sirius blinked. "What for?"

"I really should have gone yesterday," Remus continued, oblivious to Sirius's question. Remus was rather pale and looked ill once again.

"You've got a rotten immune system." Peter commented, as the three boys turned to follow Remus up the stairs.

Remus ignored this as well, hurrying quickly up the stairs as if he hoped he could lose them on the way to the hospital wing. They reached their destination and, after lecturing Remus on getting there so late, Madam Pomfrey shooed them away.

Thoroughly confused and a bit intrigued the boys walked back down to enjoy dinner and head for the library.

-

Peter was rather confused about the sudden trip to the library. He was always rather confused, but he was more so now than ever. Sirius and James seemed to know what they were doing, but so far, they had forgotten to divulge their plans to him.

Peter sat at one of the tables near the back of the library, watching his two friends dart back and forth, gathering books and bringing them back to pile on the table. Not wanting to strain himself trying to make sense of their behaviour, Peter toyed with the idea of looking at Remus's notes on their classes today. He decided not to, after a bit of contemplation, he'd have better luck if he got Sirius or James to show him how to do the stuff. Besides, Remus wasn't extremely good at Potions. Then again, this seemed to only prompt him to be even more careful on taking notes. Peter was saved from further pondering by Sirius and James finally stopping their feverish book gathering.

"Maybe," Sirius said, taking up a conversation Peter didn't remember them starting, "Maybe, it's a vampire."

James shook his head. "Nah, probably a banshee."

"But it didn't look right. Banshees usually have a greenish tint to their skin and they make more noise than that thing," Sirius argued.

Peter heaved a huge sigh, by now he was used to being clueless at times, but this was ridiculous.

James paused in his discussion long enough to notice Peter's predicament. "Oh... sorry, Pete. We were trying to decide on what's attacking people."

Peter nodded. At least he knew what was going on now, sort of, although he wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea that James and Sirius had taken an interest in the whatever-it-was. Who knew how far they'd take their research? He was afraid to think on it.


-Jade-chan