Disclaimer: Dudli-dudli-doobee-doo. Lalalalalalalala. Yabadabada.

Author note: I received exactly two answers for my question: one for and one against posting personal answers for reviews, which is not exactly making the decision easy. Anyway, if you care about this, than let me know, because I'm not sure what to do.

Well, this is another short chapter, but as it is only two days after the previous one, I don't really feel guilty. Next one will be back to normal length and probably will come in about a week.

Now, one question I received: why isn't anybody suspicious about Harry's eyes and looks? Well, it's again question for the third chapter and all the preparations they had before the school year began, which were terribly boring for me to write, so I just skipped through them. Harry's and Ron's appearances were slightly altered to avoid problems, so he's not very similar to James now. And his eyes – well they are green, but there are plenty of people with green eyes (maybe not in reality, but in books certainly yes ;) ), so I don't really see the problem.

And as usually: THANKS FOR ALL THE REVIEWS!

Author note 2: Huge thanks to Aln-Mai, another chapter is user-friendly now:)

Chapter 11

After the conversation by the lake, thinks got better for Harry. Being now sure of his mother's sympathy, he was getting less affected by his father and Sirius' obvious contempt towards him.

Not that he didn't care. Oh no, he still desperately wanted to gain their respect and acceptation, only that he didn't really know how. Marauders considered him a coward and cowardice was the worst thing for a Gryffindor to be accused of.

The easiest way to achieve his goal would be revealing the duel he had with Lindberg, but somehow Harry didn't want to do this. It would be truly irresponsible, as he had no guarantee that Marauders would keep it quiet afterwards. And, wanting to continue their education, they simply had to keep the low profile. Coming to think about it, it was quite irresponsible to let Lily watch the duel in the first place. But, of course, he didn't regret that.

Another reason for not telling James about this was that Harry didn't want to be accepted for some stupid duel with some stupid wizard. He got enough of this kind of stuff back home, not to care for this any longer. He hated all the attention he got because he was famous, people sending him love letters only because his picture happened to appear on the front cover of Daily Prophet.

Maybe it wasn't exactly the same thing, but Harry felt that if his father started to like him, because he beaten the teacher, it would be similar. When it came to people he was close with, he wanted to be recognised not for fame or even his accomplishments, but for the person he was underneath all this.

Anyway, he was pretty sure, that even if Marauders started to respect him, it wouldn't change his situation much. James would still hate him, simply because of his friendship with Lily.

The red-headed girl spent even more time with the trio now, not only during the lessons, but also after them and during the meals. They learned together, had fun together and Harry was absolutely happy about this.

They were also occasionally joined by other Gryffindors, mostly Hermione's and Lily's dorm-mates – Alice, Lea and Heather.

Lea was a source of freshest gossip and she was very funny person to be with, even if sometimes a little too loud for Harry's taste. She wanted to be a singer or model when she grew up, so she constantly checked if her hair and make up were okay. Harry and Ron started betting on what hair colour she would wear the next day.

Alice and Heather on the other hand, where mostly talking about quidditch and Ron found a lot of topics to discuss with two girls. Heather was not spending too much time with them though, as she was to busy 'making sure that there wasn't even one broom closet in the school, where she hadn't snogged at least twice' as Lea claimed. Well, certainly she was with her boyfriend most of the time.

Harry and Lily played chess a lot – after all, they started their friendship during that game. Ron usually watched and laughed whenever either of them made some stupid move. He tried to play with almost everybody in Gryffindor – apart from Marauders – and had yet to find a match for himself.

Overall, they were slowly starting to be much more accustomed with their situation. They rarely talked about home, although they missed their families and friends. Whenever something happened that reminded them of someone they left behind, they would suddenly stop smiling and be silent for a while.


The lessons during the second week weren't really different from the first week of school.

Transfiguration was exhausting and extremely difficult. They were working on summoning spells, which meant creating a totally new object with magic. The process itself was very similar to vanishing something, only backward. They started with matches, just as in their first year and still, apart from few Ravenclaws, Lily, Hermione, Remus, James and Sirius, no one managed to summon a match for longer than few seconds.

Two handsome Marauders used transfiguration as an occasion to show off. Everything that McGonnagal required them to do, came to them as naturally as if they knew the spells before, which probably was the case. With bored expressions on their faces, they played gobstones by summoning and vanishing them. They also complained few times, that they expected NEWT level class to be more challenging, then spells, which even a first year would do. Peter watched his friends with awe, while Remus was still working on his match.

To Harry's astonishment, McGonnagal seemed oblivious to this and simply let them be. He was also a little disgusted by their behaviour. Hermione, who also had everything right, simply helped Ron and Harry, instead of keeping her nose stuck up in the air. Same applied to Lily, who had currently moved to sit with Alice and corrected her pronunciation of the incantation. Harry wondered, why neither of James nor Sirius tried to help Peter, and in the end Remus did, as soon as he was finished.

Charms followed the similar pattern, only that here Lily and Hermione were usually faster than Marauders. Flitwick was also less patient with their attitude and even substracted some points from Gryffindor for interrupting the lesson.

Probably the biggest comedy were potions. They did literally nothing, and the classes changed into the prank-war between Marauders and certain greasy-haired Slytherin, who was probably the only person in the class trying to work.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were easily the best students in their year, which they found quite amusing. Lily was glad, when they taught her everything they new, even if it was only the OWL level – she still was far behind them.

Harry and Ron would probably be perfectly happy ignoring the subject, but of course Hermione made them work, with a threat, that when they come back, Snape will be more than happy to throw them out from his NEWT-level course, seeing that they knew nothing. So, they produced different concoctions amusing themselves with watching the havoc around them.

Throughout all the lessons, Marauders usually sat at the back of the classroom, to be able to do anything they wanted without teachers noticing. Lily and Hermione preferred to sit in the front, so they were divided by whole classroom length.

It didn't really bother Sirius, who was constantly trying to get Hermione's attention. It started on transfiguration, when Hermione's match suddenly started growing leaves and changed into a miniature of crimson rose. Hermione ignored it though, probably thinking that she made a mistake with her charm and transfigured it back into the match.

Soon enough she learned, that it wasn't her mistake, as strange events started to happen around her more often.

Once a short note appeared, telling her that she was Venus, goddess of beauty, incarnated. Or she found her quill transfigured into a much more beautiful one, bigger and with golden edges. Or a chocolate frog she was about to eat, turned into the real, alive one and started singing 'Kiss me, I'm your prince'.

She was not sure what to make of this. She guessed very quickly, that person responsible for those little tricks was Sirius. Whenever she turned back in her desk after another of small presents appeared, she would see the handsome Marauder casting her flirtatious look or winking at her with a smile.

She was not really sure how to interpret his behaviour, though. If all that Lea Leafdrop said was true, then Sirius was probably trying to bust his ego, by getting the new girl. She wasn't blind, she knew that she was good looking now and she was actually receiving quite a lot of male attention.

Anyway, getting involved with a person, who in reality was twenty years older and, moreover, dead, wasn't one of the things she would do. So she decided to ignore the handsome Marauder, even if he was really sweet. And she didn't tell Ron and Harry about them.


On Wednesday morning a sign appeared on the wall in the Gryffindor common room. It was an information about the tryouts for a seeker position in the team.

Harry read it three times and went to breakfast in a very thoughtful mood. He missed quidditch so much and here he had almost no occasion to play or even to fly. Apart from the Saturday morning, he hadn't touched the broom since the beginning of the school year.

Ron asked him what was going on, when he saw his best friend sitting and stirring cold porridge absentmindedly.

'Hello, Harry, anyone home? Knock, knock.' He added, when Harry didn't answer. Few people laughed at that and finally Harry blinked as if he just woke up.

'What?'

'I asked what are you thinking about, bro?'

'Oh... I saw the Quidditch tryout announcement this morning.'

'Oh!' Ron nodded with understanding.

Alice eyes lit up with excitement, when she heard the news.

'Really?' she asked. 'When are they? Tell me?'

'In two weeks, from what I heard.' Lily joined the conversation. 'On Saturday. Going to give it a try?' she asked with a smile.

'Sure!' Alice replied. 'I'd love to be on the team. Can you imagine it, Lily?' she forgot about her food completely and started to recall how she used to dream about being a professional player when she was a kid. 'Not a usual dream for a three year old girl.' She finished with a happy laugh.

Everybody laughed as well and then Pat Parmesano, who was sitting with them this morning, asked:

'Anyone else here is going to try as well?'

Harry shook his head sadly to that. He would love to, but it was impossible. Others did the same and Lily asked with a playful grin:

'And you, Pat?' the fat Italian boy grinned back mischievously and replied:

'Of course. You know, I'm perfectly built for the seeker. The bigger the seeker is, the bigger chance that snitch will be close to him!' A gale of laughter followed the chubby boy's statement. Harry had to admit, that it was a nice trait, which Pat possessed – to be able to laugh from yourself.

Soon the happy mood was interrupted by the arrival of mail. Needless to say, that they didn't get any letters. Who would write to them? Only Hermione, who decided to spend her pocket money on Prophet subscription, was now holding the newspaper.

'Harry! Ron! Oh my, look!' she shouted suddenly, her face pale.

They immediately saw what had caused her sudden anxiety. On the cover of newspaper, there was a large article about the Voldemort's attack. Harry read the text quickly and paled as well. There were several murders previous night and all took place in Hogsmead. Bodies were found in terrible state and there was a two year old child among killed. There was nothing about the Dark Mark though and a name "Death Eaters" wasn't mentioned even once.

Maybe Voldemort is not calling his followers like this yet? Harry wondered.

There were murmurs around the Great Hall – obviously everyone was now reading the news. Harry looked around the table. Most of people had eyes opened wide with terror and looked sickened by the terrible event.

Few students went out and Harry wasn't really sure, whether it was because they were genuinely sick and needed to go to toilet, or because they wanted to write to his parents and assure them they were all right. Probably both.

Suddenly Harry noticed a group of students who actually seemed more like agitated or excited then scared. There were few students in the Slytherin table sitting around Snape and discussing something with a growing heat. Then Harry noticed a younger boy looking very much like Sirius, smiling cruelly. It must be Regulus Black.

Harry subconsciously turned to look at Sirius and he saw the usually relaxed Marauder sitting with clenched fists, his eyes boiling with anger and hate and directed on his brother. James was whispering something to him and suddenly two boys stood up and left The Great Hall. Whatever they were up to, Harry was sure that it had something to do with the article and with the smug expressions of few Slytherins.