I'm sooooo sorry about the short chapters (I'm not good about making them longer! I just can't do it! *breaks into sobs and runs away*). And somebody asked me a while ago if James and the others are already in the future. Nope. Not yet. Though I'm sure that soon they shall. I keep trying to make it be the time, like at one point in this chapter it was going to be the time, until I remembered that everyone else had to be with James and Sirius....I'm confusing myself. By the way, I believe I have been programmed to create cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. I'll keep trying to make end of the chapters be easier to finish with, okay? Thank you reviewers!

Chapter 9: Decisions

An idea had come to James earlier in history of magic, while he'd been ignoring Professor Binns, and now it was time to look into it. He sat down and opened the closest book.

* * *

He'd finally found out what he was going to do. But he couldn't talk to Sirius until after charms....or maybe....

James decided to just skip the waiting part of the afternoon, and he pulled the time turner out of his pocket, glancing momentarily around the library to see if any other students or the librarian could see what he was doing. But no one would see. He was in a sort of enclosure between two shelves that almost visibly sagged with the effort of carrying hundreds of books, sitting at a small table. He could just barely see the library between the bottom of one shelf to the right of him and the top of a row of books. The wall was right in front of the table he was at and an empty space lay after the enclosing shelves before an empty canvass painting on the wall.

He wished he had his invisibility cloak, but he didn't feel like wasting time going up to the dormitories when he would no longer be alone in ten minutes, and he couldn't go anywhere with anyone around. James looked once more at the time turner dangling from his hand and turned the hourglass.

He wouldn't be seen again today until after nightfall.

* * *

Sirius couldn't say that he was extremely worried about James, but he was at least a bit worried. It was the longest the he'd ever been in Hogwarts without seeing James around. Vaguely, he wondered if something had happened to him, but he doubted it. James had never been one for getting into dangerous situations without getting out of them again, perfectly healthy and ever-more arrogant.

So when he went up to bed at ten o'clock or so, getting too fed up with waiting for James, what Sirius didn't expect was for James's voice to awake him less than thirty seconds later.

"Wake up, darling! It's time for breakfast!"

Sirius opened an eye, then turned over onto his side, muttering as he did, "Damn the eggs and bacon, I'm going back to sleep." Then he groaned and cursed more colorfully as James whipped the sheets off of him.

"Come on!" James whined in a whisper, "We have to go and see what happened two days ago!"

Sirius rolled over onto his back. "I wait up half the night to see where you were, and when you come around, all you can say is, 'Come on, Sirius, buddy, old pal! Let's get going! Exciting adventures await!' Bah!" And he pulled the covers up and rolled away from James, burying his head in his pillow.

* * *

"Well, maybe he's sore at me for not turning up in Charms." James told himself as he lumbered down the corridors, making quite a bit of noise, pulling his invisibility cloak's hood up to cover his head as he heard footsteps nearing.

He scowled at the stench of dungbombs as Filch passed with what looked like a bag of them that must've weighed as much as a large dog. As soon as Filch had gone, James pulled the hood down. He didn't like wearing the invisibility cloak's hood. It made him feel claustrophobic.

"But if I do find out what this is all leading to, then I need Padfoot with me. I don't need Wormtail, but I don't care if he comes. But not Moony." He suddenly felt a small spurt of remorse toward one of his best friends and scowled at a painting of a small girl who was looking at his floating head with fear. "Nope. Not Moony. It looks as though ole Jamsie is out of the picture in Moony's books. The stupid angel. I'm always in trouble, so he immediately thinks the worst of me. Well fine. Then I'll just have to find out what really happened, and convince ole Reemsie that I didn't do anything!"

* * *

But James didn't know when he would end up working out his troubles, so he coasted through breakfast the next day, Saturday, then went up to the quidditch pitch for training and went through that until noon, then trudged back down the Hogwarts lawns and through the Entrance Hall to the Great Hall and plopped down next to Sirius.

"How's it going?" Sirius asked glumly.

"Tiring." James said, cutting up a steak. "You?"

"Bad."

"Why?"

"Ah, met up with Snape in the library, and he was all over your little--" He coughed, "--dilemma."

"Oh." James said.

"Well. Why don't we try to work this out...today."

James felt his stomach leap and he smiled, "Today?? When?"

Sirius looked up at the enchanted ceiling, scanning the blue sky, and said through a fierce grin, "How about....now?"

*Whistles innocently*

Cliffhanger? What cliffhanger?