Chapter Thirty: School's out and About

It was the end of May, and the regular Hogwarts students had just been sent home on the Express. The school would be host to the parents of the graduating Seventh years. Those students who were interested in watching the graduation ceremony were invited to stay at Hogwarts during the next week, but were warned that they could easily be "tossed unceremoniously" into the street if there were too many parents.

Sirius, James, Remus, Lily, Lummy, Sasha, Harold, and Gerald, were all planning to visit Harold and Lummy's home in Delaware. They were just packing up when the Gryffindor Quidditch team came running up to them. Little Amy Moran was in front, and much to Sirius' and James' dismay, wasn't quite so little anymore. She stopped, breathless, her dirty blonde hair disarrayed.

"These are for you lot, our favorite Gryffindor captains."

"Ames, you shouldn't have," sighed Sirius, holding a hand up to his heart.

"You're right, but do open them," answered Paul Cootes.

Sirius opened his, and discovered it to be a bludger with his name engraved upon it. Unfortunately, as soon as he opened it, it began to fly towards him at a most alarming pace. Sirius was without his club, and was in great danger of being dismembered as a result. Amy Moran smiled, raised her wand, and whispered something. The bludger came to a rest peacefully in Sirius' hand.

"What'd you say?"

Amy whispered it into Sirius' ear, who laughed, and whispered it to James. Everyone else was rather annoyed because no one revealed what Amy had said. James looked at his own package, and asked eagerly,

"Is it a special Snitch? Or a Quaffle? Snitches are cooler though," conjectured James, running his fingers unnecessarily through his hair.

"Of course not, that would be too predictable. Open it, instead of standing about like an idiot," commanded Lucy Phelps.

James ripped up the package, which revealed a tiny model of James flying in circles after a red ball. Every so often, it would catch it, and the model would cheer.

"Does it only fly in circles?"

"Er…yes…it was supposed to actually be a sort of game, but we couldn't get it to do anything else," answered Amy, ruefully.

"We?" asked James, looking at the rest of the Quidditch team as if to ask whether they were involved in its creation.

"The SBFC. They're very useful, especially with things like this."

"I thought that they only listened to Sirius."

"Well, I'm pretty good friends with him, and you're his best friend, so they were quite accommodating. Not to mention Ash is a good friend of mine," replied Amy, blushing over her little speech.

"Why does Sirius get the better present?" questioned James, who was watching the model of himself fly constantly around and around. It was making him quite dizzy. Thomas Bradley decided to answer the question,

"Well, Sirius was the better captain."

Sirius himself looked rather surprised at this pronouncement. He and James gazed at the remainder of the Quidditch team for confirmation. Almost on cue, the entire team rolled up their left sleeves, and a dark scar was present in the same place. James blushed, and mumbled something about "at least we had practices".

"I had practices, I resent that, mate!" complained Sirius, reveling in his year of captaincy. It was everyone's turn to laugh.

"What about that time you cancelled practice so you could go on that date?" teased Andrew Robbins.

"What was her name again?" asked Sirius, drawing a blank.

"It was Clarissa Waters, mate," supplied James, laughing at his best friend's selective remembrances.

"I made that practice up, didn't I?" defended Sirius.

"Only to have slept through the make-up practice," added Lucy.

"We were all shivering at six o'clock in the morning, doing laps around the pitch…" began Tom.

"…we did tell you that you never woke up before ten," remonstrated Amy.

"…and it was therefore quite useless to schedule a practice so early," put in Paul.

"…even if it was the weekend before the Slytherin game," James pointed out. Sirius appeared thoughtful for a moment, and then he retorted,

"We WON that game!" The team laughed even harder. Sirius looked as though he had been confounded.

"What is it now?"

"Only because we were superb…" started Andrew.

"…and because you set fire to the Slytherin seeker's broom. I think it was Carrow, he almost burned off," described Lucy, barely hiding a grin beneath her hand.

"And you are very lucky I did that, because otherwise you wouldn't have caught the Snitch, Lucy Phelps," scolded Sirius, even though he too was laughing.

"True, but it got you banned from for the next five weeks," reminded Amy Moran, her stomach hurting from laughter.

"You would have missed our next match if McGonagall hadn't switched up the match order," remembered Tom wonderingly.

"Minerva does have a soft spot for moi, does she not? It would have been rather appalling to play without a captain, no?" Sirius explained.

"It has been done before though, remember Adrian Meliflua?" said Paul Cootes, referring to the Slytherin captain who had been banned from their final match. Sirius looked thoughtful, and queried,

"Who were we playing that match, anyhow?"

Another round of laughter issued from the rest of the team, causing everyone in the common room to turn around and stare at them in wonderment. James spoke up first,

"We were playing Ravenclaw."

"And why, pray tell, is that so funny?" asked Sirius, a bemused expression on his face.

"Do you remember a certain dark-haired Ravenclaw you were involved with the week before the match?" answered Lucy cheekily.

"One Ashley Turpin, I believe," appended Andrew Robbins.

"We all were sure that you would throw the game for her," suggested Thomas, his ears turning red.

"I didn't though. I was too good of a captain for that," bragged Sirius.

"Not only did you refuse to throw the game, you dumped her the day before the match," repeated Amy.

"And you didn't just dump her, mate, you pranked her," admonished James.

Everyone had a mental image of an angry Ashley Turpin running after Sirius, her robes soaked in ink, holding open a charms textbook that was completely blank.

"I do love your Quidditch pranks though," gushed Paul.

"What other Quidditch pranks have I played?" asked Sirius, once again forgetting about all the things that he had done.

"Shall we tell him about his fourth year one?"

"I wasn't there," lamented Amy, "Do tell."

"I think I remember watching this…" reminisced Lucy.

"Well, it was a dark and stormy afternoon in mid-October…or was it November," opened Andrew.

"November, probably," suggested Tom Bradley, even though he had not been on the team that year.

"In any case, we were playing Slytherin. It was a rough and tumble match, and some of the fans became quite involved. Sirius, in his spontaneous manner, grabbed his handy wand," inserted James.

"…and bewitched the Slytherin broomsticks into the first three things he could think of…"

"…a hag, a wolf, and a fwooper…"

"…and they followed around that poor Ravenclaw in the audience," said Paul Cootes, "Until you tried to attach the fwooper to the ground using a sticking charm."

"Unfortunately, your charm work was a bit spotty," taunted Tom.

"…and you ended up sticking the fwooper onto the girl! Who was she?" wondered Andrew. James began laughing hysterically, and Sirius blushed a deep red, showing that he did remember this particular fourth year incident.

"Sasha Tsukino," announced James. The rest of the team, or at least those who paid attention to the Marauders' love lives, nearly gasped.

"No wonder Remus' girl detests you, Amy, you've got to hear what happened next," recovered Lucy. James continued with the story –

"The fwooper was attached to Sasha, and sang its mournful song for the rest of the week. The wolf kept trying to eat the fwooper, so it followed Sasha around it. The hag was entranced by the combination, and the three went with Sasha to every class."

"Sirius even wrote a little song about it that Peeves used to sing…" recalled Andrew. At this, Paul burst into a version of Mary had a little lamb –

-

"Sasha had a little fwooper,

Its feathers were bright yellow,

And every where that Sasha went,

The fwooper had to go.

-

It went to school everyday,

Which no one seemed to mind,

It made the children laugh and play,

To see Sasha in a bind.

-

And so McGonagall turned her out,

Much to her dismay,

Sasha waited patiently about,

Till Pomfrey did appear.

-

Pomfrey could do nothing yet,

It was not a spell she'd brung

And Sasha missed a lot of class,

While the fwooper sung…"

-

"How did she get rid of the fwooper then? Not to mention the hag and the wolf," asked Amy, curiously.

"The wolf finally ate the fwooper, and the hag killed the wolf. McGonagall finally un-transfigured the hag, even though she said it was a really good bit of Transfiguration," finished James.

"It really was," added Sasha, who had been listening to the end of the story from Remus' side.

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Sasha had a little fwooper who liked to review…