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.

Authors Note

I am so sorry, that is all I can say, this chapter should have been up two weeks ago but somehow it just didn't happen, I had a birthday on Wednesday last week and my friends threw me a birthday party so I had to socialise and invite people over so no time to write. I am sorry but I do hope that this chapter satisfies you.

Family And Friends

As the echo's died away all James could hear was a curious ringing in his ears and it wasn't from Mrs Black's speech, he was very, very angry; when Siri…Black had first received his Howler James had been gloating, here was his ex-friends payment for lying to him, for staging a ridiculous fake fight to make James like him then stabbing him in the back by turning out to be a dirty, rotten, good for nothing, scheming prat like the rest of the Black family. What was worse was that James had fallen for his act; he had truly believed that he had found his first Hogwarts friend; when he had first found out, in those few awful minutes between the Black name being called out and Sirius being Sorted, he had been sure that it had been a Slytherin plot and that they were probably laughing their heads off about it. Then Sirius had been Sorted into Gryffindor and the world was turned upside-down.

That wasn't meant to happen, James had never heard of a Black being Sorted into Gryffindor, even Ravenclaw was unusual and the Blacks always said that it was just because the person read to much; it had been strange, James' first though had been "Poor Sirius", then he had remembered that he was mad at Black. Just because the Sorting Hat had made a mistake didn't mean he hadn't been lied to, if he really belonged in Gryffindor he would have told James his name out right and damn the consequences. James had just seen Black thrown out a carriage; he would have accepted him, if he had just explained.

James had to admit that the theory of a Slytherin plot sort of fell through after the Sorting, but the fight that had begun the moment they had entered their dormitory was proof that a Potter and a Black could never be friends. At least that was what James had thought as he lay in bed pretending to sleep but no in the cold light of day he wasn't so sure, if Sirius' mother was as bad as she sounded then his home life must have been a nightmare; if James had had that voice for a mother he would have wanted to rebel. Since it was obvious that his family didn't approve, wouldn't befriending Sirius be one in the eye for the Black clan and wasn't that what he had been brought up to do? He was meant to deify the Dark families in any way he could and having Black for a friend would certainly be interesting…Oh what the heck, James knew that he liked Sirius and to get back his friend all he had to do was…

His decision made James marched got up from his seat and in the resounding quiet that the letter had generated, marched up the aisle towards Sirius who was still sitting staring at the ashen remains of his mother's disapproval, strangely enough he didn't look to fussed about the condemnation he had just endured, indeed he seemed to find the whole situation hysterically funny, he was wearing a stunned grin and was chuckling slightly.

James came to a stop behind Sirius and tapped him on his shoulder, Sirius spun round quickly but his grin faded when he saw James. Undeterred by his less then enthusiastic reception James stuck out his hand,

"Congratulations on getting in to Gryffindor," Sirius' wary look disappeared, to be replaced with a hesitant smile and when James made no attempt to withdraw his hand his face was transformed by a huge grin. He swung round and almost leapt out of his seat, grabbing James' hand in a strong handshake he said in a carrying voice,

"Thank-you, I am very glad to be here!"

James didn't know who it was that started clapping, it might have been the Jynx girl or one of the Bones family, it might even have been the enthusiastic Prefect that had escorted them to the Gryffindor common room the night before; who ever it was didn't matter though because soon the whole table was cheering or coming up to congratulate Sirius. It was as though people had just realised that the Sorting had been "one in the eye for Slytherin". The Slytherin table certainly didn't seem to pleased at all the attention Sirius was receiving as many of the Gryffindors pointed out to the grinning pair of black haired boys.

James was quite startled when a small, frail looking Ravenclaw girl with spider web black hair came over, after the throng of Gryffindors had dispersed back to their meals, to talk quietly to Sirius.

"Well done," she said softly as she slid smoothly in to the seat next to Sirius "I was worried that…"

"Don't worry, you'll get wrinkles," he turned to James who was feeling quite puzzled "Andromeda, this is James my best friend, James this is Andromeda, my favourite cousin and co-conspirator."

A pale, fragile hand was extended in his direction and James shook it gently, she smiled at him, her grey eyes that looked almost exactly like Sirius' sparkled softly at him.

"Thanks, for helping him." she said sincerely. James, embarrassed let go of her hand and muttered something about it not being a problem.

"Still, thank you, he needs someone to look after him."

Sirius made a face and said that he could look after himself; Andromeda however said that it was easier to look after yourself if there was someone watching your back and James seeing the nasty glances a small group of Slytherins were sending their way had to agree with her.

Fortunately apart from snide comments in the corridors, James and Sirius were left pretty much alone by Sirius' Slytherin family for which James at least was thankful, as much as he would have enjoyed a scrap with the enemy the first week was not the time, he was much more interested in impressing the staff by doing as well as he could in their lessons.. He explained this wish to an incredulous Sirius as they walked along a corridor to what they hoped would be the Charms class room; the theory went something like this:

If you are respectful, helpful and do as well as you possibly can in the first few weeks of term the teachers will be blinded by this persona for the rest of their time at school, this will make it easier to cause trouble and get away with it, also the first weeks are vital for gathering as much information as possible about the staff and their lessons and this is hard to do if the professor is breathing down your neck for most of the lesson.

Sirius agreed to follow James' lead on the matter since the idea seemed to be a good one; of course, he added, if it meant that he had to hand his homework in on time he would have to reconsider. James never got the chance to answer or joke about his friends question because the classroom they had been hoping would be the Charms classroom turned out to be Professor McGonagall's NEWT Transfiguration class of seventh years, unfortunately they were in the middle of a start of year test involving very advanced human transfiguration and two first years barging noisily in on them caused at least two of them two bungle it up, creating some very interesting human/toad hybrids. Not surprisingly the professor and her class were not pleased to see them and it was only because of James' frantic apologising that they escaped without points being taken, they might have continued wandering around the school if not for the kindness of a amused Hufflepuff with curly blonde hair who took pity on them and whispered to them the quickest way to get to the Charms classroom as they were beating a hasty retreat.

They arrived at Charms ten minutes late with aching legs and breathless lungs; fortunately Professor Flitwick was sympathetic and merely told them to take their seats at the front of the class. Under the glare of Lily Evens scornful eyes they trudged up to the front of the classroom where they flopped into the seats beside the girl with blonde pigtails and a tearstained face, according to Kamilah White the girl had been up the whole night crying and no one had been able to help her because she couldn't speak a word of English! This had provoked a discussion about why she was at Hogwarts but the few theories they had come up with were pitiful to say the least.

Professor Flitwick spent the rest of the lesson giving demonstrations of the Charms they would be performing in their first year and telling them how important pronunciation was. He told them stories of the terrible things that could go wrong if you didn't say each syllable of the spell exactly as it was designed to be said, sadly Sirius was not able to convince him to conjure up a buffalo to illustrate exactly what he meant but as Remus said later you can't have every thing in life.

Transfiguration was, as Professor McGonagall the stern head of Gryffindor house had said, the most difficult subject taught at Hogwarts, he had spent all of her lesson trying to make his matchstick turn in to a needle and the stupid thing had only go slightly pointy. True this had been better then most of the class's attempts, the only other person that had made any change to their matchstick had been Sirius who's matchstick had formed a small dent when the eye in a needle should be. Despite his lack of results and the huge amount of complicated notes they had to copy down off the board James had enjoyed Transfiguration, though he felt that McGonagall needed to lighten up a bit, she had been the first teacher to give them homework.

History of Magic was boring there was nothing more to it; the only ghost professor at Hogwarts droned on and on about goblin wars in a voice like a broken down muggle vacuum cleaner boring the entire class into a stupefied doze, even the most dedicated history student fell prey to his soporific mutter and James had never seen any point in learning the names of goblin leaders even when his father had been telling him about them.

Potions was completely different to what he had expected it to be, even his mother who was probably the most relaxed person James knew turned serious and precise when confronted with a cauldron, Professor Arbuckle however was slapdash, vague, careless and quite frankly dangerous to be around. She had stumbled into the classroom looking as if she had just emerged from an explosion in a firework factory, her face was covered in soot, her greying hair stood on end and her robes were covered with burnt patches and strange coloured spills; their introduction to Potions had been the professor throwing open the cupboard, hurling potion ingredients at them then shouting "RIGHT LETS SEE WHAT YOU MAKE WITH THAT LOT". The class, which was a mixture of Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws, shocked into stillness for a moment, then gradually the first years began to stir themselves, some of the more sensible ones opened books and started looking up ingredients but the more open minded, curious or just plain stupid people among the class that threw random ingredients in and waited to see what happened. By the end of the lesson the classroom was in chaos, almost every possible thing that could have gone wrong had gone wrong, every cauldron held something different, brown sludge that ate pencils, bright blue runny potions that sloshed on to shoes, brick red, lumpy yellow it was amazing how many potions could be made with the ingredients provided. Most of them it was true didn't do anything remotely useful, but Karen Cokelwick received five points to Ravenclaw for her perfect batch of hair dye and James and Sirius managed to concoct one that puffed out perfectly formed radishes every five minutes. Not all of the potions were harmless either, although Remus Lupin had been one of the few people to follow a recipe it was generally agreed that his potion was a complete failure, at the end of the lesson instead of the bogy, green wart remover it was meant to be it had turned grey and stuck to the bottom of his cauldron.

The only lesson that James defiantly did not like was Herbology, any subject where you were forced to prune things was almost by definition to much like hard work, but the main reason that James disliked the subject was that they had Herbology with the Slytherins. This meant that the spent the entire lesson being insulted while they tried to prune and pelted with dirt and leaf clippings every time they had to go to the compost heap. It was on one of these trips that James decided to take action; he dumped the entire contents of his rubbish bag on the head of Severus Snape, a greasy haired boy that Sirius had pointed out to him as being "up to his ears in Dark magic". The trick worked better then he had thought it would, Snape, temporarily blinded by the clippings stumbled right in to the compost heaps gaping maw, the heap chewed thoughtfully a few times, as though trying to determine exactly what this new food was then, disgusted, it spit Snape out along with some half digested dead plants. James splitting his sides with suppressed laughter quit the scene of the crime, but the sight of Snape sitting amid the sloppy remains of a compost heaps meal with a rather dazed look on his face was one of the best moments of his first week.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was different...

Shout outs

brennQT: I qiute agree, Sirius doesn't deserve any of the things thatare going to happen to him. I am glad yo found my Preeves funny, I can understand how you were confused my writing style confuses my English teacher sometimes, unfourtunatly that means I get bad marks untill I explian just what I was trying to convey. Thanks.

marauding-siriusly: I do have more incentive to write unfourtunatly real life tends to get in the way. Origianly the axe was real but then I thought for a bit and decided that it was too dangourous even for Peeves and I got a kick out of making you think that Remus' head was going to roll.

Amalynne O'hara: Sorry my updates are so bad, Mrs Black is an awful, foul woman andI found it really difficult to write her speech since i didn't have the 5th book to compare it with.Anyway glad you liked it.

elsawriter: I am just glad to have you back. Peter will not be changing for quite some time he is only eleven so he has a long way to go before he betrays James and Lily, I do like haveing chapters from his perspective, it keeps it balenced. Yes I am English but I go to school in Scotland.

Dazzling Dame: Thanks again for the honer, I don't seem to be able toadd stories to the comunity yet, is there a problem? Your best friend is welcome to read it and i hope that they like it, you are lucky having friends that share thesame love of the books no one I now does and they all think that I am very wierd sitting on the computer discussing it. You flater me though i am definatly not up to JKR standerd except maybe inthe lenght of time it takes me to update.

SnufflestheInsane: Thanks for your two very enthusiastic reviews and I am sorry that I haven't updated sooner. I have a good plot? Most people complain that they can't see any plot. Sorr that my spelling sucks I will chabge it.. at some point.