Miss Moony would like to dedicate this chapter to little mimi for being the first reviewer.
Miss Moony would also like to thank misstress of the flames, Kara Adar, shazia Born confused, Serendipity9, Poketheveil, dumblydoor, plutobaby494, Freakstar, The Female Nerd, moonypadfoot, pandas rule the world, SiriusLuver16, witchgrl177, Fk306 animelover, Cringe, maliaphire, ScrewyLouie12 and Lady Lily3 for reviewing.
To SiriusLuver16: Harry teaches the seventh years, Ron and Hermione teach the sixth years, Neville has the first and second years, and Ginny and Luna have the third and fourth years. They're mostly working in pairs, or on their own, but like you saw earlier with Harry, Ginny and Luna, sometimes they help each other out.
To maliaphire: Er… Because I wanted to put their wedding in the fic, but I figured that Tonks would've been born while Sirius was still in school, 'cause she's not that much younger than him, so she was born before Ted and Andromeda decided to get married. She's illegitimate, basically. And at the moment, she's about five.
To witchgrl177: Hopefully, yeah, there'll be a lot from the Marauders' perspective, especially Sirius.
------- I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good -------
Chapter 15
The students were gone, for at least a month, and Hermione was glad of it. Except for the fact that, now that the holidays had started, Luna seemed to have been recruited to assist Hagrid and Professor Flitwick with the decorations.
Consequently, the suits of armour were merrily dancing about the hallways, making a noise that sounded rather like badly-played string instruments so loudly that even Peeves was avoiding them like the Plague.
Cringing as she ran from a particularly festive suit of armour, she breathed a sigh of relief as she felt the portrait to the Defence Against the Dark Arts quarters slam behind her.
Only to find that the ceiling of their common room was covered in baubles, proudly displaying Harry's smiling face. Luna, Hermione thought wearily. She must have salvaged them from the Room of Requirement last year.
Harry was going to be horrified when he saw.
Though perhaps he wouldn't mind so much, considering how happy he'd been to let Luna get away with anything recently. Including that "positive comments" thing that he'd been so embarrassed about, but he'd done anyway, because Luna thought it would help to subside the general gloomy atmosphere of the school at the time.
And it had worked, to a certain degree. But I digress, she thought, moving back into her new favourite mystery: the way Harry was acting. It was all very odd, really (most things were, when Luna got involved, but this was surprising, even considering that).
Footsteps echoed down the staircase from Harry's room. Hermione sighed, and braced herself.
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Almost every Christmas previous, Sirius had had at least one friend present to join in on the festive pranking, even if it was only Remus, who insisted on giving Sirius a stern lecture and making him do research beforehand. The truth was, the Marauders were only ingenious when they were a team: Sirius and James provided the ideas, Remus did most of the researching, James led the expeditions, and Peter… well, Peter helped with whatever needed help the most. Usually researching.
When the others were away, nothing managed to come together. So Sirius had resigned himself to a month of complete and utter boredom, while the teachers wore smug looks and prided themselves on their un-pranked selves.
Or not, it seemed, as the holidays were not even a week old when posters started going up around the school: in response to the present crisis (i.e. Voldemort's recent tendency to kill everyone who annoyed him, instead of just a few people), the Defence Against the Dark Arts professors would be setting up a duelling club in the Great Hall after lunch.
Sirius, of course, had finally agreed to stop idolising his new professors when James and Remus had both expressed their belief that there was something inexplicably wrong about them, and how some of their stories just didn't ring true: Professor Patterson's tale about the Andromeda scandal, for instance, and it was unlikely that the Ministry would stoop low enough to ask teenagers to fight in the war. The others were guilty by association.
However, the prospect of learning to duel – properly, that is; and they might even learn things that Patterson hadn't talked about in class – was too good to pass up. And so, along with nearly everyone else who'd signed up to stay for the holidays, Sirius found himself standing close to the platform the next afternoon, eagerly awaiting the professors' arrival.