Just Kids
A Marauders Fic
Summary
Their lives will shape the fate of the world, magic and muggle. They will help drive back the darkness, their names will be known to everyone, they will be loved and hated in turn. Not quite yet though, right now…they're just kids.
Disclaimer
You are gullible if you believe the following:
That the word gullible has been taken out of the dictionary.
&
That I am our beloved JKR. I'm not; I don't own the rights to the Harry Potter books or any of the characters in them. I am not making any money out of this so please don't sue. Since I don't have much money you wouldn't get much out of me anyway.
Author's Note
I can't believe how long it's been since I updated, I can only say that I have been really busy with exams and things. I am sorry but I just haven't had time to type. Anyway here it is, hope you enjoy!
A small girl with flashing green eyes and a mass of auburn curls that looked like a hurricane had just been through them. She had the pale skin that redheads often have but her nose supported a surprisingly small amount of freckles. It was a very proportional nose, not to small, not to big and with just the right amount of turn up at the end to make it cute but not enough to make her look like a pig. Her Hogwarts robes swirled impressively around her slight form leaching away the little colour her face had so that her hair shone like a beacon at the top of a colourless tower. She was an impressive sight especially when viewed from the floor, Sirius' current position. James seemed to share this sentiment and he slipped to the floor so he could admire he better his eyes never leaving her face. She ignored the thump that her new admirer made as he hit the floor instead choosing to pursue her still dazed quarry.
James was dazed as well but in a different way to his friend, as an eleven year old he hadn't had much experience with the emotion known as a crush, in the past it had meant pulling Emily Bones' pigtails but this… something in his subconscious had awoken and was telling him quite firmly to impress this girl by any means possible.
So enamoured was he that the fact that the object of his affections looked likely to string up Sirius didn't impress its self on his conscious until she was nearly half way across the carriage. Being the loyal friend he was he decided to stop her and, busily composing some appropriate words of greeting in his head, grabbed her by the arm.
She spun round and James was confronted by a pair of emerald eyes that drove all coherent thought from his mind to be replaced by the sort of incoherency that makes you say the first thing that comes in to your mind, unfortunately for him it was the shape of her eyes that attracted his attention.
"Your eyes look like nuts." he blurted out, then realised the implications as the girl's anger reached new heights.
"What!" she seemed to be on the verge of apoplexy.
"Not bad nuts, good nuts, with shells!" he cursed the mad impulse that had caused him to utter that thought as he searched for the appropriate word.
"Got it! Your eyes look like almonds!" he spoke this with a certain degree of triumph but she was not impressed, instead of thanking him for the compliment she slapped his hand away and turned back towards Sirius, who had just gotten up and was watching James flounder with a certain degree of amusement. This changed to defensiveness when the girl/hellion confronted him.
"Just what did you think you were doing?"
"Well you see," James attempted to explain "we've been sitting here…"
"Minding our own business," Sirius interjected.
"That's right, for quite some time and since he," he pointed at the cause of the discussion "hasn't stirred a bit we were starting…"
"To get a bit worried. So after careful thought and deliberation…"
"Wedecidedtowakehimupwiththefireworks" gabbled James.
"It was purely through concern for his welfare," said Sirius smoothly "that we even considered…"
"Tormenting a sleeping boy who has done nothing to either of you." She looked at them both with disgust "You should be ashamed of yourselves, can't you see he's sick."
James looked at the boy, now that she mentioned it there was a look of long illness about him, an aura of permanent worry and many sleepless nights tossing and turning. His face was too thin and there were shadows under his eyes that looked like livid bruises on his too pale skin. His hair was thin and limp hanging round his head like bits of tawny brown spaghetti, in it James could spot at least one strand of silver, the boy was going grey before his time. He looked like that picture of Darrell Potter just after he had returned from Germany in 1936, battle weary and curse scared.
Sirius hadn't been looking at the face but at the arm of the boy, he had noticed some thing peeking out of the bottom of his sleeve and he couldn't quite work out what it was. Finally, curiosity overwhelming him he darted forward and pulled up the boy's shirt cuff to reveal a scar that encircled his whole arm. In the gathering dusk the bite marks seemed slightly luminous, pale even in comparison to the surrounding skin. The scar tissue was thick and ragged, the skin around it had puckered up and looked slightly blistered. It was a nauseating sight.
A gasp of horror escaped from their red-haired companion and James let out a low whistle.
"That must have hurt!"
"No kidding," Sirius agreed, "wonder what sort of monster did that?"
"We could ask him." James reached out to shake the boy's shoulder but was stopped by the girl grabbing his hand with a vicelike grip.
"How could you?" she shoved his hand away, disgusted. "Even after you've seen the condition he is in you still want to satisfy your own curiosity at his expense. You two have no respect for people's rights, no self-discipline and not an ounce of common courtesy. You make me sick."
James exchanged exasperated looks with Sirius who indicated at the door with his head, James sighed and nodded. His personal feelings towards her were just as admiring as before but he would now prefer to look upon her from afar, preferably out of the range of her insults.
"Well," Sirius smirked, "we wouldn't want you to throw up all over our nice clean carriage."
She snorted.
"Clean?" she snorted, "I've seen cleaner dustbins." James had to admit it; on that count she was right. Several hours of the boys' presence had had a noticeably bad impact on the compartment. Sweet wrappers were scattered all over the floor, some of Sirius' socks had managed to migrate to far corners of the room, both sets of school books had been used for a more dangerous version of a pillow and James' owl, Tempest, had escaped to perched in a high up corner occasionally depositing smelly packages onto the area below him. Under her derogatory gaze James became very interested in the intricate way his shoelaces were tied and Sirius nervously shoved some of the debris under a seat. Then he recovered himself and smiled suavely at her, she scowled back, arms crossed with her wand dangling from one hand.
"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," the girl scowled at him more ferociously then ever "we don't want your stomach troubled on our accounts."
"It would trouble our consciences you see." agreed James in an appropriately woeful tone.
"So I really think that it would be best for all us present here…"
"If you leave immediately." She was apparently to busy forming an appropriately scathing counter attack to notice that the two boys had placed themselves in prime positions to force her out of the carriage. James grabbed her right arm, Sirius her left and together they frogmarched her swiftly from the room. Her struggling and extremely vocal protests did not avail her, she was dumped out side the carriage and informed that should she come again they would be out, so she shouldn't ring or knock, just go…quickly.
The door closed on their triumphant grins and the girls look of mingled frustration, anger and surprise.
Well what do you think, opinions and criticisms are welcome and encouraged.