Chapter Eleven: First match of the season

The day of the Gryffindors' match against Ravenclaw arrived in no time. It was not in James and Sirius' nature to get nervous before a game, but they always got excited and hyper, even more so than usual. Rivalry occurred between the two teams, but Slytherin wasn't involved, so it was all friendly; meaning fun, harmless hexes were sent each way between lessons, and various players missed lessons due to feathers sprouting and voice boxes being humorously modified and other cases of the sort.

The two Marauder leaders, being the most famous members of the current Gryffindor team, received the bulk of these friendly attacks. Between them, they paid seven visits to the school's Hospital Wing, with maladies such as horns growing from their heads, one leg becoming shorter than the other so that they had to limp about everywhere, abnormal skin colours (such as bright shades of green and blue), and buckets stuck on heads. Sirius had to lead James carefully to the infirmary for this particular ailment, as his sight was marred by the bucket, amid crowds roaring with laughter. What Sirius didn't realise, however, was that a fair share of the hilarity was aimed at him, due to a hex, thrown at him earlier that day from one of the Ravenclaw Chasers Billy Budweiser, which had turned his brown hair to a rather shocking pink. Sirius hadn't noticed this change yet, having not seen a mirror, and everyone including the other Marauders thought it so funny that no one had told him.

Not that any of the players had any problem with this, of course; it gave them a chance to miss lessons and to create anarchy in the corridors, and Sirius and James gave as good as they got.

So, on Saturday morning in the Gryffindor common room, there was an air of excited expectation. The team emerged from their various rooms to cheering and, in the Marauders' cases, more laughter. When lessons had finished the day before and they had returned to the tower, Sirius had at last seen a mirror and was aghast at the sight of his luminous new hair colour. The others had fallen about laughing, Remus saying that they had had bets on how long it took Sirius to look in a mirror, anyway. Sirius eventually saw the joke, and laughed along gallantly, then, deciding he felt sorry for his friends because they couldn't fully join in, he granted James blue hair, Remus green and Peter yellow. He found he could laugh much harder after that, despite James' complaints that no one was wearing the Gryffindor colours, and Peter looked like a Ravenclaw supporter.

As a consequence, the five other members of the team had their hair turned to shining golden, which looked perfect atop the scarlet Quidditch robes. Now James and Sirius looked even more out of place, and it gave Lily the opportunity to accuse them of trying to be different whatever they did.

"Padfoot always played for the pink team anyway," James told her over breakfast, and dodged a croissant which quickly came flying in his direction. "You'll have to do better than that later on, mate, if you want to keep your place as Beater," he grinned.

The two teams came onto the pitch to a cacophony of cheers, each house still trying to out-do each other. The Gryffindors were very eye-catching with their newly done hair and the bright red robes. James shook hands with the Ravenclaw captain, a seventh year called Toby Barrett, team keeper, and a friend of the Gryffindors.

"May the best team win," he told James, smiling broadly.

"And I'm sure we will," James returned. A second later the whistle blew and all fourteen players, plus referee (Charms teacher Professor Swift) soared up above the crowds and got to their places. James immediately flew above everyone else and started searching for the Snitch. He kept moving at all times, not wishing to be hit by a Bludger, or be caught up by the opposing Seeker, a slight fourth year with fly-away curly blonde hair called Jill.

Ravenclaw had possession of the Quaffle first, and were dangerously close to scoring until Sirius decided to put things right by pelting a Bludger towards one of their Chasers. The Chaser in question, a lean dark-haired fifth year called Dean, dropped the big red ball in his efforts to dodge the Bludger, leaving Steven Brown, one of Gryffindor's finest, to catch it and head towards the opposite goalposts, yelling, "cheers, Sirius!" on his way to scoring the first goal of the match.

Within half an hour, the teams were close in scores, Ravenclaw with sixty and Gryffindor with fifty. The Lions weren't worried, however, for they knew that they had the better Seeker, and James had been performing better than ever during the training sessions. He caught sight of the Snitch as the Ravenclaws were rejoicing after their sixth goal, and sped towards it, noticing Jill was distracted by the early celebrations.

The tiny golden ball was hovering half way down one of the goal posts, fluttering its wings innocently. James was far above it, trying desperately to speed up his broom as the crowd noticed his determination with excitement. Jill separated from the group and followed James, brushing the curls from her face as she tried to catch him up.

"Go on Prongs!" bellowed Sirius from the other side of the pitch, but James pulled up short; the Snitch had disappeared again. The scarlet and gold section of the crowd let out a disappointed moan as their Seeker circled slowly back upwards, and the Slytherins jeered, delighting in their enemies' setback.

The Lions' mood increased considerable when their second Chaser Charlie Cooper scored them two more goals in quick succession, and the Ravens started to feel worried when they missed a penalty awarded to them when Sirius' fellow Beater, a hot-tempered girl named Helen, hit one of the Chasers in the head with a Bludger. Unsurprisingly, said Chaser missed all three goalposts, even though he must have been seeing two sets of them.

Sirius and Helen did a joyous high five as he congratulated her on her fiery temper, but a second later he'd been winded by a Bludger to the gut. Managing to hang onto his broom as he did a somersault in the air, Sirius looked round to see the retreating back of Marley Branson, a powerful Ravenclaw Beater. Catching his breath, Sirius vowed to get back at the huge, burly seventh year. Unlike the other Ravenclaws, Branson didn't like to get too friendly with the opposite team, and kept himself to himself, which made him all the more intimidating. Sirius continued with the game, ignoring a slight stomach ache, but made sure he intercepted all the moves that Branson attempted. If he couldn't beat him by strength, then he'd beat him by being annoying, Sirius told himself with a grim smile.

Narrowing his eyes and searching all around the pitch, James regretted turning all his team members' hair gold, as he kept mistaking their heads for the Snitch. He suddenly saw Jill racing towards the ground and followed suit in a flash of red, before she pulled up sharply. Looking above her, James saw the Snitch had darted upwards, and turned direction so he was racing towards the heavens. In less than a minute he had the tiny ball in his raised fist, its delicate wings beating uselessly.

He was engulfed by his six team-mates as they lighted on the ground together as one red block, and the cheering of the crowd nearly drowned out their own shouts of rejoice. James and the others were carried to the school doors on the shoulders of the Gryffindors, as though they had already won the cup. Their win of this first game had hopefully set the tone for the rest of the tournament.

Once back at the common room, the party and celebrations lasted throughout the afternoon and into the evening, homework forgotten and left for Sunday (as it generally was, anyway). James tried to protect the food he had gathered for Lily's party, but Remus and Sirius brought it all down to be consumed by the happy Gryffindors. James told them that they would have to replenish it in the morning, but they didn't care for now.