IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE READ!

Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that my work has once again been plagiarised. I would like to remind all of you once again that NONE of the works published on ANY other sites is mine. I have ONE other unedited, very old copy of this posted under the name of my former co-writer, which I have abandoned, under another name. I cannot recall the site I posted this copy on, so please, please, please let me know if you find it! I have NOT posted this on MuggleNet Fanfiction, Harry Potter Fanfiction, or Fiction Alley, all of which I have found my story on.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THERE IS ANY MORE PLAGIARISM OF THIS STORY!

CHAPTER TEN:

Meeting Leona

"How long do we have to keep scrubbing the floor?" whined Natalia. "The black hole probably sucked up all the dust, anyway."

Sirius silently agreed. They had been cleaning for two hours now. "Maybe McGonagall forgot about us," he said.

"Does that mean we can go?" asked Natalia hopefully. Sirius shrugged, and she groaned. She glanced at the sparkling floor. "That's it," Natalia declared. "I'm going back to the common room. I think a floor is clean enough when I can see myself in it."

"Yeah," agreed Sirius, dropping his rag. "I'm getting out of here."

"Quickly, before she finds out," said Natalia, and as soon as she made the rags disappear, she and Sirius sailed out the door. It was unfortunate that they happened to bump right into Peeves at this time. His poltergeist face cackled with glee.

"Students out of bed are we?" he sang, grinning at their guilty faces. "Ought to inform the caretaker, I should."

"We're not breaking the rules!" protested Natalia defiantly. "We just got dismissed from detention."

"Really?" said Peeves, not looking too perturbed. "Well, we'll just see what the caretaker has to say about that. FILCH!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Sirius grabbed Natalia by the hand and they sprung into a mad dash. Along the way, they saw a mangy cat with large eyes, piercing through them.
"Filthy troublemakers... we'll get them this time..." came a raspy voice, and Natalia and Sirius sprinted the other way.

"Students shouldn't be out of bed," said Peeves cheerfully, with an armful of water balloons, "Bombs away!" The two of them dodged the incoming ammo that came their way. As they ran, Natalia noticed something, something that she had never noticed before. But never mind that now.

"Quick, in here!" she motioned him into an old broom closet she had suddenly found. It was as if it had suddenly appeared out of the wall, but Natalia had no time to think. The door closed firmly as they hid, adrenaline pounding in their skulls. Moments passed, both unaware that they had been holding their breaths. They looked at each other silently, grinning stupidly.

"Why do we always find ourselves in broom closets?" Natalia asked aloud, "It's getting quite repetitive."

"Getting ideas, Lynx?" Sirius smirked suggestively. He groaned when Natalia gave him a hard whack to the arm.

"Let's get out of here before Sirius becomes a drunken monkey again," teased Natalia as she opened the broom closet door and walked out, with Sirius following behind. Luckily, the two of them managed to enter the common room without walking into Filch or Peeves.

Lily looked up from her work and stared at them when they came back.

"What happened to you two?" she asked, looking at their dripping wet forms.

"Oh, you know," said Natalia carelessly. "Skiving detention, Peeves shooting water balloons at us, Filch on the prowl, locking ourselves in a broom closet... the usual."

"Hullo, Professor!" said Pippi cheerfully that Wednesday morning. "How were your holidays? I had an ace time, I did; Daddy brought home twenty kilos of shrimp and we spent all holiday trying to breed them. Of course, Mangy the Cat accidentally ate half of them and we only produced half of the shrimps we could have."

"That's... interesting..." said Professor Deboale, who was probably crestfallen that the cat couldn't have eaten Pippi as well.

"But I missed you too, Professor," said Pippi, batting her eyelashes in a most disturbing way. Sirius, James and the others snickered, watching as Deboale's face turned deep red with embarrassment.

"Well - Welcome back, class," said Deboale, deciding to ignore Pippi for the moment, "I hope you had a nice holiday." The second-year chirped with mild excitement, and the class soon filled up with noise as the students proceeded to explain their holidays to each other with great detail. Pippi was one of them.

"And we had this great fishing boat, with loads of pretty, pink shrimp - I swear, I was nearly eaten by the Loch Ness monster, it was smaller than I expected - and then, Dad made one of the shrimps grow to be as big as the entire boat, and we sank -"

"I take it this isn't the first time we've called Nat a nutter," murmured Remus, chuckling. Malia looked greatly confused.

"Why is she disrupting the class?" she asked, it being the first time she had witnessed the great Pippi Longstocking in action.

"Because she can," said Sirius, grinning widely. "And she does a splendid job of it."

"... Last time, we had a Boggart, and I should like to continue our studies -"

"Professor Deboale! I'm allergic to Boggarts! I've got a note from my Mummy, you see, and she greatly expresses that I should not be exposed to any more Boggarts due to my overactive imagination... Blimey, I think Mum's a bit on the barmy side, she even wrote that I'm spontaneous... I've never spawned an anus in my life..."
And by the time class was dismissed, there was no mistaking the look on Deboale's face – he was sorely regretting ever getting up this morning.

"Have you finished your essay, yet?" asked Lily sharply at breakfast, "It's due today, you know."

"I know, I know," said Natalia, waving her best friend off. "And as a matter of fact, I did finish it."

"Good," said Lily with relief. "I'm just writing where I got my newspaper and other references from at the bottom of my parchment." The bibliography was nearly a third of the size of her essay, and that alone, was much longer than the required length.

"You should really calm down a bit, Lily," said Natalia. "It's our second last year, we should be enjoying it."

"I'll enjoy it when I've secured a good job for myself," quipped Lily. "Now where did I put that clipping..." she mumbled to herself, rummaging around the books in her bag. Natalia playfully rolled her eyes at Sirius when she heard Lily let out a quiet whoop, triumphantly fishing the newspaper from inside one of her books.

"Oi, Sirius, proofread my essay, would you?" she asked, grabbing her parchment from out of her bookbag and tossing it to Sirius.

"It's fine," said Sirius without looking at it. "Now leave me alone - I'm eating."

"I just want you to proofread it," she insisted, waving the essay in his face.

"Don't make me start another bonfire," he warned. The threat made Natalia stop waving it around as she had spent two hours on that essay, and was quite keen on not spending anymore. James chuckled slightly.

"Done!" sang Lily happily, glancing at the newspaper for a brief moment. Her eyes narrowed in confusion as she began to read it. At the same time, Malia was furiously scribbling onto her parchment with last minute corrections. Peter seemed to be writing on a blank parchment, as though he had never started in the first place.

"What's wrong, Lily?" asked Natalia. "Did you misread a fact?"

"Huh?" Lily looked up, "oh - no, I didn't. It's nothing," she said quickly, flashing a smile. She placed the newspaper clipping in a safe spot so that she wouldn't lose it, and smiled again. "I was just reading another article on the newspaper," she answered. "Nothing's wrong."

Natalia looked at her quizzically, but shrugged and went back to her breakfast. "Remus, would you like to proofread my essay?" she asked hopefully.

"As soon as I'm done proofreading my own," he replied, holding up his parchment of miniscule writing. Natalia stared at his essay.

"You blokes and your brains," she muttered. "And you call yourselves Gryffindors. Geekydors, more like," she added.

"Hello, Sirius," giggled Leona Park, a dark haired sixth year who looked extremely similar to Natalia, standing up from her desk and running over to Sirius just as he was entering the Ancient Runes classroom. She completely ignored the girl beside him and wrapped her arms around him, giving him a welcoming hug.

"Er, hello, Leona," said Sirius, awkwardly hugging her back. He could smell her lovely, strong perfume as she nuzzled her head into his neck. Leona shot Natalia a triumphant, but dirty look when Sirius couldn't see, as though gloating that she was the winner. Natlaia frowned at her, but did nothing more.

When Professor Cauden entered the classroom, all the students took their seats. "Something's wrong with Park," muttered Natalia as Professor Cauden sprung into another of his lectures. "She's such a bloody flirt."

"What's that supposed to mean?" demanded Sirius suddenly, his face darkening, "Nothing's wrong with her! And don't you dare talk about her like that, or I'll make sure you regret it."

Natalia opened her mouth, as if to question his suddenly odd behavior. In the end, Natalia closed her mouth and turned back to the professor. Make sure I'll regret it? thought Natalia angrily as she furiously took notes, Who the bloody hell does he think he is?

"Oi, Lynx!" came a whisper. "Help a mate out, would you?" Sirius was grinning hopefully at her, waving a piece of blank parchment. Professor Cauden had exited the room with a blackboard full of runes already written.

She looked at him, trying to process the fact that he had threatened her not fifteen minutes ago and now he acted as if it never happened. She considered giving him a well-chosen hex.

"Nat?" asked Sirius again. His face was friendly and sincere, always with that hint of smug arrogance. His gray eyes were grinning at her.

Natalia put all angry thoughts at the back of her head and grinned back at Sirius, acting as if nothing had ever happened. There was no point in creating a show, she reasoned to herself, no sense in making a conflict.

"Sirius, it's amazing how you managed to pass four years of runes," she laughed. "How do you do it?"

"Because you do it for me," said Sirius. "Now help!"

"A Galleon a minute, mate," said Natalia, sticking out her hand. "Mind you, I'm charging you three Galleons already for even having this conversation."

"What? Come on, Nat..."

She laughed at Sirius.

Natalia liked to avoid having emotional confrontations whenever she could help it. Having these types of serious arguments made her think she could possibly lose a mate in the process, something she did not like to think about.

It was dinner, and the four Marauders and three girls were situated in their usual spots. There was James, with his usual mountain of food that he could always miraculously finish; Malia, with her vibrantly golden, bouncy hair; Sirius, with his sweltering good looks; Remus, with his gentle and tolerant disposition; Peter, with his darting eyes and great love for sweets and desserts; Natalia, with her laughter and happy aura; and lastly, there was Lily, with her shiny dark red hair and month-old newspaper.

"Lily, what are you doing?" laughed Natalia. "You already handed in your essay. I'm sure you'll get 100 on it, so why do you have that newspaper out again?"

"Because," came the very informative reply.

"Yeah, Lynx," said James mockingly. "Don't deny Lils of her intellectual entertainment. Eat your potatoes."

Natalia grumbled to herself as she picked up her fork and began to scoop mashed potatoes into her mouth as James had ordered her to. Malia laughed at her expression when she saw the girl wince.

"This is disgusting!" Natalia cringed, pushing back her potatoes. "Who put -" she bent her head to sniff it. "Ugh. Who put sour cream in the mashed potatoes?" she demanded. Her eyes flashed when she saw James and Sirius stifling their chortles.

"I don't get it," Remus said, frowning in confusion. "I like it when there's sour cream."

"I don't," said Natalia, glaring at the two boys, "and Sirius knows perfectly well that I don't."

"You give me too much credit," objected Sirius. "How would I know?"

"Because of the time I accidentally spat it in Professor Bolive's face while he was walking by during dinner and it earned me a detention," retorted Natalia.

"Pity about that," agreed James, chuckling. "He was one of the better Defense Against the Dark Arts professors. Who knew he had a severe allergic reaction with sour cream?"

"If you don't want your potatoes, Nat, can I have them?" asked Peter. She nodded, looking at the potatoes with disgust.

"Dunno how anyone can eat that," she shuddered. "It's as bad as licking the floor."

Sirius snorted. "Maybe for you," he smirked, "but I'd rather have the sour cream."

"I bet if you were covered in sour cream," snickered James, "your fan girls would be tickled pink to lick it off you."

Natalia and Malia made mirrored gagging noises. "That's sick!" cried Malia. "That's completely gross!"

"My two dislikes rolled into one," said Natalia, grinning and looking disgusted at the same time. "Merlin, I'm going to sprout nightmares from that."

"But honestly," said James, laughing, "I bet they'd love to lick it all off, Padfoot."

Sirius glared at him.

"Drunk monkey alert! Drunk monkey alert!" shouted Natalia. "Quick, contain it before it spreads!" She grabbed a spoon and, scooping mashed potatoes from Peter's plate, launched the sour creamed mush right between James' eyes. Two more were shot off in the general direction, and soon, James' glasses were covered in moist potatoes.

Natalia laughed at James. "Phew, that was a close one," she grinned, setting her spoon down. "A second longer, and we'd all be drunk monkeys." Sirius laughed with her as he watched James grab a napkin and clean his face and glasses. However, just before he could do anything more, Professor McGonagall walked past them, with a stern, warning look on her face, as though she knew what he was up to. She soon passed on, but James did not want to risk it. He contented himself with an icy glare.

"Oh no," breathed Lily, as though the world had suddenly turned upside-down. James turned his gaze from Natalia and looked at her amusedly.
"What happened, Lily? Did you realize you missed a punctuation mark in your bibliography?"

Chapter End Notes: All right, I know the beginning Author's Note was a bit frantic, but who wouldn't be, if you went to MNFF and found a story titled 'Everything I Ever Wanted' by 'GinnyPotter123' posted on 'June 2nd, 2007'? Seriously, this is kind of scaring me now, because I'm being subjected to a stream of hate mail by angry readers who are convinced that I was copying and pasting because of a single post date. Ugh, it's horrifying how easily that can be changed, yet how many people it can fool. Please review. I'm in need of cheering up.

ArcanusRose