Harry Prewett and the Case of Inadvertent Illegal Time Travel
Chapter Ten: Lay Me Down to Sleep
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Author's Note: I'm sorry guys, eight months for this pathetic excuse of a chapter, I know, it's not fair. I tried to turn out something completely different and I got stuck every time, in fact I barely got this scrap of fluff out. So I'm hoping that by muscling past this bit and getting the Marauders to Hogwarts and such will give me back the reins of this particular story.
Thanks to everybody who reviewed, alerted and favourited and to all those who PM'ed me to let me know that my story was missed!
The last few weeks before the start of term flew buy in a rather quidditch shaped blur as Harry came to the conclusion that Oliver Wood had nothing on James Potter when it came to quidditch fanaticism. James was determined to make him into the best keeper he could be and Harry was pretty sure the military had a less rigorous training program. Sirius wasn't nearly as bad as James but Harry suspected that he was taking a certain amount of pleasure in watching Harry suffer, not having completely forgiven him for getting along so well with James.
Things with Sirius were still a bit rocky. As much as Sirius enjoyed the idea that Harry liked him and wanted him around he really didn't like sharing attention and was just, in general, kind of a berk. It was a cold comfort to know that he would, eventually, grow out of it. There were times though when hanging with Sirius was just about the most fun Harry had every had in his life, like the day James spent the afternoon with his grandfather.
They went into town together and raided the music store, Sirius pointed out all the albums he thought were cool and tried to explain about the differences between muggle and magical styles to Harry, who was clueless when it came to music. Then they went to get ice cream from the Ye Olde Ice Cream Shoppe, which was run by a young pregnant woman with a shaved head and a nose ring whose name was Erica and had been Sirius' first crush, and the stories she told were hilarious. Sirius then dragged him to the grocery store where they bought a loaf of bread and took it down to the pond to feed to the ducks and played Exploding Snap under the weeping willow tree.
Sirius and James were becoming something more like friends than people he just happened to hang out with everyday and, best of all in Harry's opinion, they didn't pester him with questions about his old life.
Besides all that there was the freedom in running amok with the two pranksters in the nearby mixed magical and muggle town of Hollybrook and not having his face plastered across the front of a newspaper or being stopped and gawked at on the streets because of his status as the Boy-Who-Lived.
Hollybrook was a great place, filled with great people, not to mention it was the only place Harry had ever been where you could by groceries and potions ingredients in one place.
Harry often wondered why he'd never heard of places like this before. In fact as far as he knew there were no mixed towns in his time but that didn't make much sense to him because according to James situations like Hollybrook, where the muggle town had expanded upon an existing Wizarding community, weren't that uncommon especially around some of the old Manors. The Bones', the McKinnons, the Longbottoms, the MacDougals, and the Prewetts all lived in a similar situation to the Potters.
The Malfoys, Lestranges, Warringtons, Greengrasses and the other families that valued blood purity, on the other hand, had warded the land for miles around their estates to keep the muggles out. Sometimes centuries in advance of the spread of population. Then there were those, like the Blacks, who kept their family seat in a London townhouse, completely hidden from the muggles around them and most likely plotting the demise of their neighbours.
The night before September first found Sirius and Harry both stretched out on James' bed watching as he turned his room inside out trying to pack. Sirius had tuned the wireless into a music station and was drumming his fingers along to some band called Dragon Bait.
"I think I want a guitar," Sirius announced to the room at large.
"Siri you don't know how to play the guitar," James pointed out, dumping a stack of clean Hogwarts uniforms into his trunk carelessly.
"I could learn," Sirius said.
"True," Harry agreed with a nod.
"Don't listen to this git," snorted James, "Last year he was on about taking up photography, bought the camera and everything and it sat rotting in a corner for half the year—"
"Until Christmas where it made Doe an excellent gift," Sirius finished with a smug grin.
James snorted again.
"If you want to learn to play the guitar, Sirius, you should go for it. Just make sure you actually want to do the learning part and not just have the finished product pop out of nowhere," Harry said.
Sirius wrinkled his nose.
"Have you seen my copy of 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi?" James interrupted.
"Under the desk," Harry and Sirius chorused laconically.
James bent and pulled the book and a few others from the drift of textbooks that had accumulated under his desk.
"How in the hell did I get so much junk? Y'know, you lazy sods could get up and help," James said scowling at them as he tossed the textbooks into his open trunk.
"It's not our fault you're not ready," Harry pointed out.
"And who's the lazy sod here, our trunks are already packed and downstairs by the door," Sirius added indignantly.
James tossed his glasses, the sturdier black pair, onto his desk in disgust and ran both hands through his hair making it stick up wildly.
"I'm done with this!" he announced, "Mum can just owl me anything I've forgotten."
"You've got half your damn room in that bloody trunk Jamie, what could you possibly have forgotten?" Sirius asked rolling his eyes.
"You know as well as I do it's always something, and besides who forgot all their underwear last summer and had to have it mailed."
"Who filled all of my underwear with that muggle itching powder, forcing me to wash it all the night before we had to leave," Sirius retorted, tossing the pillow under his head at his best friend's face.
James snatched it out of the air with contemptuous ease. He wasn't a Gryffindor chaser because of his looks after all.
"A waste of a perfectly good sample product too since you found me out before you put them on," James lamented.
James tossed the pillow back at Sirius, who dodged it with a well timed duck, and it smacked Harry full in the face with a soft whump.
"Missed me, missed me!" sing-songed Sirius, pulling a face at James.
Harry rolled his eyes and thwacked Sirius over the head with the pillow in question. Sirius turned on him, his grey eyes glinting with a predatory sort of good humour.
"Oh ho ho! Now you're gonna get it, Prewett! This means war!"
Sirius retaliated by tackling Harry to the bed and digging his fingers into his ticklish sides.
"No, no, no!" Harry said giggling hysterically, "Don't, ah, Sirius! Don't poke there, please! James, help!"
James joined in the fray, tugging Sirius off Harry and pinning him down while Harry exacted his revenge by brushing delicate touches along the insteps of his feet and the backs of his knees sending Sirius into twitching fits of howling laughter. Then, just for the fun of it, Harry and Sirius ganged up on James and for awhile after that it was a free for all tickle war.
They fell all together in a heap in the rumpled scarlet bedding breathless and gasping out laughs here and there. Sirius was sprawled out on top of James and Harry's head was pillowed on the back of Sirius' thigh and his legs hanging over the side of James' bed when the wireless went silent with a soft fizzle.
James raised his head up a bit, frowning in the general direction of the wireless.
"What happened to the music?" he murmured.
"Don't move. M'tired, you're comfy," Sirius grumbled.
"Mmm," hummed James absently his eyelids drooping down to half-mast.
"Budge up," Harry ordered Sirius with a soft nudge.
Obligingly Sirius shifted and inch or so closer to James.
With an eloquent snort Harry stuck a boney elbow into Sirius to let him know he did not appreciate his sense of humor.
Sirius was already breathing deeply, having fallen asleep on James' chest. James was mere moments away from joining him. Not wanting to move and feeling rather sleepy himself Harry toed off his socks and swung his legs up onto the bed where they tangled with Sirius' and James'. He wriggled a bit to get comfortable slinging one arm over the jut of Sirius hipbone and burying his face in the small of the taller boy's back.
With a heavy sigh of contentment he drifted off into a peaceful sleep, the slight twinge in his scar going completely unnoticed.
AN: Again I apologize for the super-long wait and the flakiness of this update! Don't kill me! In fact please channel all complaints into reviews! I'll see you all next time, and I hope you enjoyed this little filler chapter.