Standing There By You

Ch. 47- Fifth Year

A/N: No, your eyes do not decieve you. I have actually updated... And it hasn't even been a month! Thanks for reading!

...To you too, Angiela! You rock, beta.

Julie shifted through her trunk, trying to keep it steady on the rack as the train rumbled beneath her. "Parcheesi?"

Grace flicked a speck on her sweater in response, sighing and scooting further onto the bench. Lily smiled encouragingly at her Julie's endeavor, shrugging.

Julie rolled her eyes and put away the miniature board game. "Perfection?" she asked, popping back up several seconds later.

"No," Grace grumbled, knocking her head against the cool surface of the window. "Too… perky."

"All right," Julie said through gritted teeth, returning the game to the bottom of her trunk. She moved around some old robes and spare scarves. "Ooh, how about clackers?" she suggested, holding up an odd muggle device. She bounced the sparkling glass balls and clicked them together expertly.

Grace weakly lifted her head to glance at the peculiar contraption, before banging it back down again. "No thanks."

Julie set the muggle toy down with a groan. "Grace," she said, staring at her friend exasperatedly. "That's all I've got."

Grace frowned, lifting a shoulder. "Well, what're ya gonna do."

Both Lily and Julie groaned at this gloomy statement. Their commonly spirited friend had taken on an unusually dismal attitude since the start of the day; they had eventually been informed that the Quidditch team she had been rooting for lost in a dreadful match just that last weekend, and the aftermath's been, apparently, unbearably awful.

They had tried many methods in hopes of cheering her up, but as of yet they only appeared to be making things worse.

"Eagar's Elated Éclairs!" Lily whispered suddenly into Julie's ear, referring to the treats she had purchased in Diagon Alley. "Do you have any left?" Julie turned to her friend and smiled slightly, nodding her head in response. Digging through her belongings once more, she brandished a tub of the ever-lasting éclairs, and retrieved some hurriedly before Grace had a chance to view the label.

"What're those?" Grace asked loftily, just as Julie smashed the container back into her trunk.

Julie peered sideways at Lily. "Just some… chocolates." She looked back at Grace. "Want some?"

Grace shrugged a slender shoulder and lazily lifted her palm. "Sure, I guess."

Julie gladly piled on three or four éclairs, patting the top gently and then pushing them towards Grace. "Eat up!"

Lily muttered a silent protest, but before she could say anything their downhearted friend gobbled down a good portion of the sweets.

"What's wrong?" Julie whispered to a very wide-eyed Lily. "The more the better, right?"

Lily chewed her lip. "Not when half of one's enough to cheer a pair of trolls."

---

"One of our own," Sirius said, all somber-like and solemn. "One of our own…"

James sighed and rested an elbow on his best mate's shoulder. "It's always the ones you least expect."

"Yeah," Peter agreed, looking somber as well, though noticeably a tad confused. "True tragedy, really."

Remus eyed his friends' gloomy positions, Peter sulking in a corner, James draped dramatically across the compartment's bench, and Sirius hunched over, sighing miserably.

Remus sighed as well. "Shove off, would you?"

James straightened up and leaned across the aisle. "Well how're we supposed to act, eh? 'Specially after finding out you're one of them."

Sirius frowned reprovingly. "And we thought we knew you."

Remus rolled his eyes at the accusing tone, before looking down and straightening the polished badge he had neatly pinned to his robes. "You're making too big a deal out of it."

"Oh," Sirius said dramatically, holding his heart and falling against James. "See how he- he- flaunts that symbol of doom."

James covered his face. "I can't look."

Remus hid a small smirk at his friends' melodramatic performances. "Fine," he said in defeat, joining in on the mighty stretch of a show. "Would it help if I hid the badge?"

His friends each nodded somberly from their strange positions. "All right then," he said slowly, unclasping the gold pin. "The Pre-,"

"No!" Sirius shouted, holding up his hands to hush Remus. "Don't utter that cursed word in here."

Remus stared back at him for a few moments, before finally releasing a sigh of assent and gazed down, in search of another word. "Okay… I'll put my er-," he looked back at Sirius. "Well what am I supposed to call it?"

Sirius didn't hesitate a moment. "Call it jam. Definitely jam."

Peter looked dreamy. "I like jam."

James, however, did not share their enthusiasm. "You can't just tarnish the name of jam."

"Ah, right," Sirius agreed, looking thoughtful. "How abouttuna, then?"

James nodded his head. "All right," he confirmed. "Tuna it is."

Remus gave an amiable smile. "Whatever will make you lot shut up."

James returned his grin and reached over, picking up the abandoned pin and holding it against his gold and scarlet striped tie. "You know, this gives me that sort of manly, intelligent manifestation, doesn't it?"

Sirius tilted his head, studying him. "Yeah, I reckon it does."

Remus turned away from them and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small wooden case. "Up for a game of gobstones? Grace lent me her travel-sized set."

Peter nodded excitedly. "I've been practicing."

"Right then," James said, getting up. "I'm off to go find Evans."

Remus nearly knocked the tiny board over and Peter almost swallowed his game piece. "What?" they asked dubiously.

James raised a brow, wondering about but not mentioning Peter's accident with the game piece. "That's right," he said, grabbing his tossed cloak and throwing them a grin. "My Potter charm feels especially vibrant today."

Remus and Peter looked at one another, and then back at James. "What?"

Sirius stood up before James could speak. "Allow me to explain," he began, walking towards his friends and gesturing to James. "This fine chap has finally recognized his undying love for-,"

"Well let's not go that far," James swiftly interrupted. "Well, Evans and I, we've gone this far competing, with grades and such, and I've always come out on top." He looked around at his friends and grinned. "Let's just say I'd like to keep it that way." James turned to glare at Sirius, who had presently begun snickering. "And I will. You'll see."

"All right, mate," Sirius encouraged, clasping his friend on the back. "Go for it."

James winked, turning towards the door. "I plan to."

---

"My Word," Lily uttered, clasping her hands tightly around her head. "Do you think she'll ever shut up?"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Grace sang loudly, in notes of baritone, tenor, and soprano, accordingly; the ecstatic éclairs were beginning to have quite an affect on her.

Julie moaned and drew her knees up to her face. "Does that answer your question?"

"Grace," Lily ventured, leaning over the aisle and placing a hand on her presently frenetic friend's shoulder. "Take a breath… Calm down…"

"It's too late," Julie shook her head dolefully, gazing over Grace as she stood up and lifted her hands to the ceiling. "She's started up that polka rendition of 'White Christmas', again."

"Left, right, hop, left right…" Grace bounced by, dancing with an invisible Bing Crosby and not caring her shins were banging into the luggage.

"Well…" Lily began, subtly standing up. "I better get to my Prefect meeting..."

"Oh no you don't," Julie said quickly, scrambling up beside Lily. "You can't leave me alone with her!"

She gestured to Grace, who was currently apologizing to Bing for stepping on his toes. Lily cringed. "I won't be gone for long."

"Merlin, Evans. And I thought you were barmy."

Lily looked up, and to her dismay, but admittedly not surprise, found her eyes to rest upon the depressingly familiar face of James Potter. "I didn't ask your opinion," she said with an unconcerned wave of her hand. She did, however, notice his horribly unkempt look with a scoff of disgust. His collar was half turned up and his tie loosened, one shoe-lace undone and his hair… well that wasn't anything new. The only thing that looked remotely distinguishable was the gold pin attached to his robes. "You'd think you would at least try to look presentable, as a Prefect after ah ah ah…" Her jaw dropped open as she stuttered out the last several words, her face paling quite quickly and dangerously.

"YOU'RE PREFECT!" she exclaimed in a volume her friends hadn't known she was capable of.

"Ugh, Lily," Julie said, covering her ears with a pained look on her face.

"Honestly," James admonished, crossing his arms. "Downright rude if you ask me."

Lily paid them no mind. "Give me that," she demanded, reaching for the pin attached to James's robes.

James stepped back teasingly. "Sure," he said, covering the borrowed badge. "Come and get it."

Lily didn't hesitate. "Fine," she said, grabbing onto the badge and tugging at it. She gave a huff of achievement as she held the shimmering pin up high between her thumb and forefinger.

"Hey!" James exclaimed, looking down at the robes where the pin was previously fastened, and a large rip now lay. "Those were new!"

Lily ignored him as she inspected the badge, searching for any feigned authenticity. Coming to the saddening conclusion it was indeed valid, she tossed it back at him, purposely missing by three feet and hitting his forehead. "Dumbledore must be mad," she shook her head, her words faint with disbelief. "Making an idiot like you Prefect?"

"You're right," Sirius spoke up, poking his head into the compartment. "'Course James isn't Prefect."

Lily let out an audible sigh of relief as James shot his friend a glare. Sirius shook his head at James and muttered, "Don't worry mate, I'll get ya outta this." He grinned at both of them and snatched the badge out of James's hand. "James isn't Prefect," he repeated. "I am."

Thus ensued almighty uproar.

"You?" Lily admonished, as James hit his friend swiftly upside the head and Grace shouted, almost teary-eyed, "Look, a gaggle of geese! Isn't it beautiful?"

Sirius paused and looked over at Grace. "What?"

She only nodded, eyes wet with tears as she watched the honking birds fly by. "Absolutely breathtaking."

Sirius shook his head and turned his focus back on Lily. "Yes, me," he boasted, thrusting his chest out to display the pin as he paraded around the compartment. "I will reign over Hogwarts as ruler of all that is Prefectable-,"

"Ooh, ooh, my turn," Peter said, waving his hands around with bubbling excitement. This caught Sirius off-guard and gave him plenty of time to seize the badge. "Peter Pettigrew," he swanked, "Renowned Prefect and-- ugh!"

"I'll take that back, thank you very much," Sirius said, securing the pin once more onto his tie. "I do, after all, have a Prefect meeting to attend, seeing as I am a Prefect and only Prefects are allowed to attend the Prefect-,"

"You're going to drive me insane," Lily cried out.

Sirius eyed her, eyes wobbling as if she'd swoon any moment and face as red as her hair. "You're not already?"

"Shut up," Lily replied, rather precisely cutting him off before even finishing his insult. She looked over James and Peter. "Shut up, and shut up." She held up a hand to silence Grace before she had a chance to sing along with her. "I don't believe any of you are Prefect, seeing as you're all so dim-witted it's a task just standing on your own two feet."

"Hey!" Sirius and Peter protested. James just smirked- it was a better insult than the ones she usually gave him.

Lily sighed, glancing at Peter. "Sorry," she told him. "You're not an idiot, and highly capable of becoming a Prefect."

Sirius smiled at her, bouncing on his heels as he awaited her apology towards him. "And…" he prodded, giving Lily a playful tap on the shoulder.

"And what?" she questioned simply. "I still think you're an idiot."

To her left Grace let out a fresh peel of giggles. "Ha!" she squealed. "An idiot!"

Just then Remus entered the room, looking bewildered at the unusual confusion but determined all the same. "I'll take that," he said, reaching for the gold pin fastened to Sirius's robes. He looked over at Lily. "Oh, you're Prefect too?"

"Oh no," Lily said sternly, placing one hand on her hip. "I will not believe any more of this nonsense… It seems everyone's Prefect, doesn't it?"

"Be reasonable, Evans," James said, "There are only four Gryffindor boys in fifth year, and if it isn't one of us, would it be an imaginary friend of Dumbledore's?"

Sirius scratched his head thoughtfully. "Wouldn't doubt he's got one."

"Probably," James agreed. "Nothing wrong with an imaginary friend."

"As much as I'm charmed by your philosophical musings," Lily began, looking very much like she didn't mean it. "I've-,"

She cut off shortly as Grace rushed over and brushed past her, clobbering Remus and sending both of them soaring to the ground.

"Remus!" Grace cried happily, hugging him so tightly round the neck she was nearly choking him. "I missed you soooo much!"

"Gr-Grace," he gasped, trying desperately to release her strong hold. "I just saw you last week…"

Sirius snickered and slapped his knee in amusement. "Way to get attached, Remmy."

Grace let out a girlish giggle, foreign to her usual heartfelt laugh. "Remmmmy," she sang, sitting up on her knees and squirming back onto the floor. "That is a lovely name."

"Right," Lily said, standing up. "The Prefect meeting's about to start so er… yeah," Within two seconds she had scooted out of the compartment, hurrying down the hallway so no one could stop her.

Remus wrestled out of Grace's grasp and stood up, panting. "Well," he said, quite breathlessly. "Would one of you lot like to go to the meeting, or should I?"

"Flobber, dobber, oober-doober."

With these inspirational words Dumbledore sat down in his lavish dining chair, signifying term had officially commenced.

"Well," Lily said, leaning back and setting her fork down onto her plate. "Today was an interesting one, wasn't it?"

Grace smiled good-naturedly, though Lily suspected this might've been the wavering effect of the éclairs. "Interesting is a good word for it."

"Yeah," Julie put in, a smile tugging at her lips. She motioned to the other end of the table. "But I think you scared the boys off with that erm… interpretive hoe-down."

Grace smirked as her friends muffled their laugher. "Laugh now," she warned, and looking down at their empty plates, continued, "but you'd just better watch what you eat. My parents bought me a wicked potions set for my birthday, and I'm not afraid to use it."

---

"I'm just saying," Sirius said, trying his best to look logical. "She did look a lot happier-,"

"All right, all right," James grumbled.

Sirius continued on. "I mean if you compare the two, when Lily came off the train assured Remus was Prefect, and previously, when she thought you were, she looked almost as happy as Remus was when Grace tackled him in the compartment-,"

"She was under the influence of éclairs," Remus defended. "You know that."

"Sure do," Sirius smiled. "And I'll have to thank her for the tip. Next trip to Hogwarts, I know what I'm feeding my date."

Remus sighed and lifted his fork, poking at his untouched mashed potatoes. "Yet another method to add to your list of how to underhandedly bait the opposite sex."

"I do not have a list, Remus, I'm not that…" he paused, looking thoughtful. "You know, maybe a list's not that bad of an idea. Publishing companies love that kind of thing."

James nicked Sirius's roll while he was still distracted, before adding his two cents in. "Right," he said. "Just make sure you share all those galleons you make."

"It's not for the money, James," Sirius said, looking rather affronted. "It's for the good of the common man; some are quite desperate, you know, and it's up to fortunate ones, such as myself, to give them the help they so dreadfully need. Merlin, James, have a heart."

James massaged his hand against his eye. "How thoughtless of me."

---

Eventually, after all of the insightful talk of interpretive hoe-downs and baiting women, the welcoming feast came to an end and everyone settled back into their dormitories.

Sirius slid across his cool sheets and smashed his face into the burgundy pillow. "Nice to be home," came his muffled observation.

His content thoughts were soon contradicted, however, when a heavy object came crashing down onto him.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, attempting to lift his face away from the pillow. "What's the big idea?"

"Sorry," Grace panted, breathing heavily. She attempted to lift the weighty box she had dropped upon Sirius. "Didn't see you there."

Remus hurried over to her, James right behind him. "Need some help?" he asked, lifting one side of the box as James propped up the other. Together they lifted the dusty carton, setting it with a loud thud onto the ground.

Sirius sat up, bitterly rubbing his bum –where the box had made harsh contact-, before looking over the tattered box. He gave an unimpressed sniff. "How lovely of you to bring him a box of junk." Nodding his head towards Remus, he added, "Nice to know she's thinking about you, eh mate?"

Grace took a moment to stick her tongue out at Sirius, before turning back to Remus and reaching towards the box. "My aunt ordered mum a year's subscription to 'DEFENSE!', amonthly magazine with a comprehensive study and history of defense tactics, but she doesn't have much interest in it, and it came with a spiffing set of Ruchberg's early Encyclopedias; I…"

Sirius sighed. He was getting much too bored listening to Grace explain the box's contents, and it'd be a real shame if he fell asleep on a night that could hold some fabulous possibilities. Spotting the spare fork and spoon he always kept handy, in case of a dire food emergency, of course, he grinned and reached for them, along with his wand. With Sirius nothing can be boring for too long, after all.

"That sounds excellent," Remus said, leaning over the box for a better glance. "Do you know who's in it?"

"Appingo, Perar," she listed, ticking off her fingers. "There's one or two more but their names weren't very familiar."

Behind them, Sirius was magicking the fork to have long black tresses, and the spook to have blonde and spiky. With the added touch of reading glasses it ever so slightly resembled Remus, making the other an obvious representation of Grace. He grinned across the room at James, and waved his wand; the makeshift puppets began dancing around one another, Remus looking as if he was doing an odd version of a one-man tango.

"And you're sure your mum doesn't want this?" Remus asked, distracted as he began to thumb through one of the top editions.

Grace nodded and flipped another one open to a page near the middle. "I thought you could use them for your articles," she said. "Are you still writing those?"

Sirius magicked the Grace fork to clobber the Remus spoon, just as she had that morning on the train. James made an odd sound from where he sat on the dresser top, trying hard to muffle his laughter with the edge of his cloak.

"I wrote a bit over the summer," Remus was saying, as he scanned the article Grace had opened to. "But not too much… Yes, that's Perar; he's brilliant, isn't he?"

The spoon and fork began to swoon towards each other, and the section where their mouths might've been hastily met together through an unseen force. Sirius smacked his lips together and fluttered his eyes at James, imitating the puppets.

"Yeah, I--," Grace cut off suddenly and gave a frustrated sigh, turning to Sirius with her arms crossed over her chest. "Attractive, Black," she said flatly.

Sirius looked up, lips still pursed and eye-lids mid flutter. "Huh?" he asked blankly. "How did you…"

Grace kneeled down until she stood at the height of Sirius's ear. "See that big shiny thing over there," she said slowly, deliberately over-pronunciating her words. "That's called a mirror."

Sirius smirked. "Well aren't you just the brilliant one," he said dryly, standing up beside the two to grab his cloak off the wardrobe. He began to pull it on. "Merlin, Grace, haven't you got any happiness left in ya?"

"Sure I do," Grace said, teeth sparkling as she smiled an unnaturally large width. "The dungbomb I put in your cloak makes me happy."

"Right," Sirius said, not minding her comment and pulling on the rest of his cloak. "There's no possible way--," he cut off very suddenly as a small explosion sounded near his right elbow.

"Oh, bugger."

A/N: I had a lot of review responses here, but it's almost a year later and I've realized that they took up a LOT of space. Well here's one big collective thanks...I'm so glad you'rereading and (hopefully) reviewing, I really appreciate it!