Chapter 13: The Ride Home
"James, if you are not going to hurry up. Your broom will be confiscated." Remus, pretending in his deepest and most manly voice, instructed James as he carried his trunk up the train. Remus' voice had shown the first sign of breaking while James and Sirus still retained their rather normal pitch.
"Nnnooooooo!! Daddy!!" Sirus, pretending to sound like a very girlie James, in his highest possible pitch, responded to Remus.
The five of them burst into laughter again. They are not going to let me leave that down. James thought as he could feel his cheeks reddening. They had been joking about that the entire ride from home to King Cross. This is the third time they are making that joke in the last hour.
The guys helped the girls to lift their trunks unwillingly up the train and all of them made their way towards the last compartment quickly. Then they all waved goodbye from the window in the last compartment to Fion who was standing at the platform and soon, the train was on its way to Hogsmeade station.
"Get off now." Lily, being the smallest and skinniest at a height of 1.5m, said as she tried to crawl out from the pile of people who climbed behind her to wave.
James, Sirus and Remus got down and gathered together in the corner of the compartment, discussing some highly secretive stuff and had totally excluded the girls, who were now sitting at the opposite end of the compartment.
"Help!!" A short boy dashed into the compartment, startling all of them.
"What's going on??" James asked the boy.
"A group of boys.. attack me.. wands.. spells.." The fair and rather plump looking boy was saying, panting heavily. He quickly ran towards the back of the compartment and tried to hide himself.
Just at that point of time, the door banged opened. Four guys with unfriendly looking faces stood there.
"Oh wow!! Here's the potty gang!!" Lucius Malfoy said. Vaness Crabbe and Gordon Goyle laughed at Malfoy's little joke.
"Hand him over!!" Severus Snape instructed.
"Why should we??" Sirus said in defiance.
At that point of time, a "Petrificus totalus" was heard from the corner of the compartment.
Malfoy and his gang drop onto the ground instantly in a full body-bind.
"Mobiliarbus." Lily shouted and moved the four guys to another corner of the compartment and stacked them on top of one another with Lucius at the bottom and Severus on top of Lucius. Vaness and Gordon, being much bigger size than the two were piled on top of the two skinny boys.
"Lily, you should have left that to us. Now we haven't any toys to play with." Sirus said, wiping off a pretended tear.
"Well, we still got the feast to deal with." Arabella said with a glint in her purple eyes.
Once again, the three guys headed back to their corner of the compartment and took a bag of stuff each and went out of the compartment. The boy who had rushed in earlier said grateful thanks and left the compartment.
"I bet you three galleons that the stuff in those bags are dungbombs." Stefanie said.
"No bet, we all know what is it. Can't they come out with a better trick this year?? Still call themselves the school pranksters." Lily rolled her eyes and the three girls went back to their corner in the compartment and continued their game of Exploding Snap, with the four Slytherins stacked in the corner.
James winked at Sirus and Remus as they watched Hagrid leading the first years to the lake for the traditional first-years journey.
"All righ', you six??" Hagrid yelled over the heads of the crowded platform. They returned his question in thumb-up signs since there was no way they could reply him in the noisy platform where all the students were much taller and bigger sized than them.
The sextet, who had no idea how to go to Hogwarts, had no choice but to follow the older crowd to a rough mud track. The girls board one stagecoach while the guys board another. Once the carriage door was shut, the coach set off all by itself, bumping and swaying towards Hogwarts.
The carriages swayed to a halt and a mass of students alighted. The guys happened to meet up with the girls along the way and walked up the stone steps into the castle together.
As they walk through the giant oak front doors, into the cavernous Entrance Hall which was lit with flaming torches. The girls climbed up the magnificent marble staircase and walk into the Great Hall.
"Where are the guys?? I thought they were directly behind us?" Lily asked when she realized the trio was missing as they settled themselves at one end of the Gryffindor table.
Arabella saw Malfoy and gang walking into the Great Hall and whispered to Lily and Stefanie. The three girls exchanged a dark look with the four Slytherins guys.
"We shouldn't have release them. Just leave
them in the train and no one will noticed that they are missing." Arabella said
as she glared the boys.
"We needed to. If not there will be evidence that we body-bound them on the train. Now, they had no proof now that we did that. And by the way, Malfoy is the son of the famous millionaire wizard, Baxton Malfoy. Do you think anyone will realize if he went missing for a day??" Lily said while keeping a lookout for James, Sirus and Remus.
The trio walked in and Lily waved to get their attention. James and Remus sat down next to Lily while Sirus sat in between Arabella and Stefanie. The three guys were grinning from ear to ear as they settled down.
"So you guys had been pranking around again??" Lily said while she tried to check out the first-years that were about to enter for sorting.
Just then there were screams coming from the Entrance Hall. Everyone in the Great Hall turned and checked out what was going on. A group of young looking first-years walked into the hall, looking drenched.
"Why are they all wet??" Stefanie questioned knowingly, looking at Sirus for the answer.
The guys burst into hysterical laughter had answered all their queries.
"Potter, Black and Lupin. Detention for you tomorrow." Came a fierce sounding voice of Professor McGonagall.
"My first detention of the year. This is worth it." Sirus grinned.
"I'm all ready for my one hundred and sixth detention." James said proudly.
"Can't you guys come up with something better than pranking the poor first years??" Lily said as she looked at the dripping wet first-years sympathetically. Some of the first-years looked like they were about to cry.
When everyone had entered, the student body watched the sorting hat sing and the first-years being sorted to their respective houses. Then there was the usual headmaster speech, which was thankfully short because everyone was starving. Followed up was the feast. Everyone helped themselves with multiple servings of pastas.
Lily, for once, had three servings for dinner because the food taste so wonderful and reminded her of her mother's cooking. Afterall, they were growing children reaching puberty at twelve. After the opening feast, the headmaster made the usual announcements such as head boy and head girl and about the Forbidden Forest being forbidden and the Whomping Willow and some Halloween ball that had nothing to do with them.
Finally the Gryffindors followed their prefects to the tower, with the password being 'All-Flavored Beans'. The second-years and above went straight to their dormitories while the first-years were left with the house prefects for some announcements.
Lily, Arabella and Stefanie had just finished washing up and all ready for bed. Samantha Phillips and Joey Johnson, their two other roommates since first-year followed up to use their bathroom. Samantha and Joey were not particularly close to Lily and her friends, but nevertheless, they made great dorm mates. They were too goodie-two-shoes in Lily, Arabella and Stefanie's opinion. Sometimes, when there was an all girls chat session, the quintet would share their crushes and gossips with one another.
"I can't believe one year had just past!!" Arabella exclaimed as she jumped onto Lily's bed.
"It was too fast. Well, perhaps because it was wonderful." Lily sighed in happiness.
"For once, I had a great time with the guys during the summer holidays." Stefanie said and hopped onto Lily's bed.
"I can't wait for the holidays already." Lily added and she started shooing Arabella and Stefanie to their own beds.
"What shall be the prank at breakfast tomorrow??" Sirus asked with the sudden recognition that they had not planned ahead.
"Not the girls for sure." Remus shuttered at the thought of what the girls did for revenge. The girls had research for a week on their revenge after their first day. They had made their clothes invisible permanently except their boxers. They the girls had fed them with a type of visibility potion, just before they charmed their robes invisible. They were able to see their robes that were invisible to everyone else. They had also charmed their plain colored boxers to white with red hearts, green with purple polka dots and red with black words of 'I love mummy' behind. The embarrassment the three received that Monday morning was enough to last them for the entire seven years in Hogwarts. And the story of them in cute boxers was the talk of the school for a couple of days before it dies off when Snape appeared in a hot pink flimsy dress on the following Saturday morning.
"How about we transfigure some toothpicks to hopping rabbits in the Great Hall tomorrow??" James suggested, yawning. He had not even sleep enough for the day when Fion so crudely waked him up in the morning.
"Good idea. Let's sleep then. We've got a hall of rabbits to deal with tomorrow morning." Sirus grinned and they all went to bed. The guys dozed off within minutes.