The Marauders Book 1 Chapter 3- The many talents of James Potter

"Good morning class, and welcome to your first flying lesson." Madam Hooch declared.

It was 7am, and the Marauders' first class on their first day of their first year was Quidditch. James had been literally jumping with joy when he found this out, and had woken all the others up at five to 'help him get ready'.

Helping James Potter 'get ready', Sirius, Remus, and Peter had soon discovered, was not as easy as it might seem. James was determined to accomplish the impossible feat of making the Gryffindor Quidditch team in his first year, and knew that the quickest way to do that was to blow everyone away in his first flying class. So, despite Sirius's grumbles, the four of them had played 3 games of makeshift-quidditch in their dormitory, with Remus as a ref, Peter as a bludger, pillows as Quaffles, and the sleeping Sirius's face as the hooped goal post. Finally, at 6:45, James had lead them all down to breakfast, feeling rather proud of the fact that he had managed to score 831 goals, and beyond excited to get to first class.

"It isn't even a tryout." Sirius had pointed out, grumbling as he scarved down another slice of bacon. "It's 'ust 'ike, a cla', mate." He'd continued with his mouth full.

James shook his head. "Just let them see the amount of skill that I am capable of. They will be impressed, and I will be on the team. Might even make team captain." He'd pointed out happily. "If they know what they're doing, that is."

Now the four of them stood out on the Quidditch field alongside their fellow Gryffindors and the Slytherins, James trying to keep his excitement under control and the other three just trying to keep their eyes open.

The Quidditch pitch was almost empty, save for their class and a few 6th year Slytherins up the stands pointing down at them and snickering. James puffed up his chest. "They won't be laughing when we win the Quidditch cup." He thought to himself smugly.

"Hold out your right hand over your broom and say: 'Up.'" Madam Hooch ordered.

James got it on the first try, and grinned confidently at the rest of his friends. Remus's broom seemed to be inching away from him as if it was terrified of the 11 year old boy. Peter was struggling to get his to move at all. Sirius especially seemed to be having broom issues.

"Up!" He shouted for the fiftieth time, and the broom moved to the right. "Up!" It moved to the left. "Up!" It did the hokey-pokey.

"Mr. Potter, did you get that up on your first try?" Madam Hooch asked, her eyebrows raised, clearly impressed.

James nodded proudly. "Yes, as a matter of fact I did." He shrugged, pretending to be modest (which was a skill he had not necessarily accomplished yet). "But no biggie."

She winked at him and James felt his heart soar.

Sirius on the other hand was starting to feel very frustrated with his broom. A maniacal laugh up in the stands caught his attention and Sirius looked up to see his cousins smirking expectantly at him. He glanced behind him to make sure Hooch wasn't looking and then, subtly as he could manage, flipped them off. By this point, everyone, even Severus, had managed to get their brooms of the ground and into their hands except for Sirius.

"Up, I tell you! Up!" He exclaimed. Finally, the broom soared up and smacked him in the face. Sirius cursed loudly, but at least now he had a broom in his hands.

"Now, I want you to mount your brooms, and…" But James was hardly listening to what Madam Hooch was saying. Instead, he found himself much more intrigued by the way the 6th year Slytherins were looking at Sirius with glinting eyes and passing Galleons back and forth as if making bets. James looked at the broom Sirius was holding and how in shook rather tensely in his hands like a bomb about to go off. With a wave of realization, James realized they had jinxed the broom. Whoever hexed it didn't do that impressive of a job, he noticed, but an inexperienced flyer would most likely be thrown off thirty feet into the air and crack their skull open.

"Sirius, have you ever flown before?" James whispered.

Sirius scoffed. "Of course I have, I've crashed my brothers' broomstick into priceless family heirlooms I don't know how many times."

James rolled his eyes. It was clear by this point that if anyone had a chance on this broom, it was him. "Trade brooms with me." He ordered.

Sirius raised a suspicious eyebrow at him. "Why?"

"Very good, Ms. Evans. Now, the most important thing to remember when flying is…"

"Because yours is shinier and when I make the paper for youngest Quidditch captain ever, I want the broom to look exceptionally shiny." James lied, talking to Sirius through the corner of his mouth.

Sirius sighed. "If I trade with you, will you let me sleep in tomorrow?"

James nodded. "As late as your soul desires."

"Now, on the count of three, I want you to kick up from the broom, hover a few feet, and then land back down." She sent James a look as if to say 'bear with me and then we'll see what you can do.'

"One." Madam Hooch turned away from the Gryffindors to look at the Slytherins, making sure they were all ready as well.

"Two." In a split second, James and Sirius swapped brooms. The second James' hand touched the handle, he knew the broom was hexed. "Alright you little bugger, let's see what they did to you."

"Three!"

20+ students kicked off from the ground. Remus, Peter, and Severus's brooms refused to do anything, Sirius and Lily actually succeeded in doing what Madam Hooch asked them to do (although they were shaking quite a bit), and James went soaring up at 150kmph.

Wind rocketed towards his face and ripped through his untidy black hair. James laughed with delight. It took him about three seconds to figure out how to work the hexed broom. He could still control it with a slight move of his finger and go in all the basic directions and stuff, it just seemed to have a set speed of 'deathly fast'. Seeing everyone (Madam Hooch included) stare up at him in awe did nothing to fix his ego. Whooping with glee, the hazel-eyed boy aimed back down to his friends. James was almost back on the ground when he realized that he couldn't stop the broom.

Not only was the broom hexed to not slow down, but he couldn't even stop it the normal way either. Plummeting to the ground, he felt both terrified and exhilarated; James pulled up inches before crashing, the tail of the old Nimbus scraping the grass. He then zoomed up into the atmosphere again, buying himself enough time to learn how to stop it.

The whole class (and the 6th year Slytherins) stared up in shock for at least a full minute, before Sirius burst into laughter. "Show-off!" He shouted.

Miraculously, James heard him, and shot his friends a cheeky grin. He changed directions, starting to plummet back to the earth again. "And this!" He shouted, seriously trying to feign having control over the hexed broom. Without losing a millisecond of speed, James took off his shoe and threw it at the hoop. He made it. Sirius, Remus, and Peter roared with delight, and even Lily looked on with awe. "Is why I should be on the team!" Madam Hooch stared up at him, shaking her head in complete disbelief, a grin stretching across her shocked face.

Up in the stands, a furious Bellatrix muttered something under her breath, and James's broom doubled in speed. Barely managing to hold on, but still acting as cocky and confident as ever, James zoomed off the Quidditch pitch and towards the castle.

Madam Hooch laughed. "Alright, Mr. Potter, you've made your point. Come back, land it, and then we'll discuss actual tryouts!" She called, her voice shrilling across the entire fields so nearly everyone within a mile radius could hear. "Mr. Potter?" But James was nowhere to be found.

Sirius looked around, grinning like an idiot, half expecting for James to zoom out from one of the stands and smack him in the face with another pillow, when his eyes landed on Bellatrix, Narcissa, Rodolphus Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy, all smirking evilly at each other.

"They hexed it!" He muttered under his breath. "He can't stop the broom, they hexed it!" Sirius hissed to Remus and Peter. "They thought I was going to ride it, and did you see how fast that thing was? I wouldn't've survived a second, but James must've figured this out before me and convinced me to switch. They hexed it!"

After a few seconds of confusion, Remus's eyes widened. "So James's stuck on a broom going 300kmph to who knows where and he has no way to stop or slow it down?"

"Pretty much yeah." Sirius threw his hand up into the air. "Hey Hoops, Remus is having urethal issues, he needs our help to take him back to the castle!" Then, without waiting for a response, he dragged an angry Remus and a bewildered Peter off of the pitch. The three of them sprinted off to Hogwarts castle.

James meanwhile was having one heck of a time trying to maneuver his broom around the grounds without crashing into anything and killing himself. He ripped over Hagrid's hut, weaved through the Forbidden forest, and spun circles around the entirety of the castle. He strained his brain for something one of his parents had told him about how to stop a hexed broom. His father had taught him plenty of warning signs that a broom was hexed, but had completely grazed over how to fix one. Fleamont Potter had most likely just assumed that if his son knew how to identify a hexed broomstick, he wouldn't be stupid enough to ride one. Five minutes in and he had no idea how to stop the broom. Ten minutes in and he still had nothing. Fifteen minutes in and James was just about ready to jump off altogether. Twenty minutes in however, he resorted to Operation 'INCOMING'.

Inside the castle that James had successfully flown 13 circles around, Professor McGonagall's 7th year NEWT transfiguration class of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors was learning the formulas for human transformation. It had been a relatively peaceful class for McGonagall, kind of boring, as after five minutes of exciting demonstrations, they needed to move on to more technical elements of human-to-animal transfiguration, which meant formula after formula after formula. Professor McGonagall pointed to the list of numbers she had been using magic to write on the chalkboard. "Now your homework tonight is to read the following pages and write a 50 page essay explaining wh-"

"INCOMING!"

McGonagall and everyone in her class whipped around to see a boy with glasses and crazy black hair flying at record speed straight towards their window. McGonagall whipped out her wand and turned the window's glass into a waterfall just in time for the rider on the other end to come out soaked instead of scarred. James Potter soared into the room and jumped off the broom on the first chance he got. Much to everyone's surprise (except James himself that is), the broom continued flying even without a rider. It tore across the classroom at super speed, shredding textbook after textbook and was headed straight for the door to the rest of the school when a tall, long-haired Ravenclaw girl stood up, bared her wand, and shouted a spell that James could swear sounded like 'your mom ate strawberries', but he couldn't be quite sure. The rogue broom turned into a wind-up toy and ceased to move.

After a few seconds of dead silence, a disgruntled and disbelieving McGonagall cleared her throat. "Yes, well, seeing as your textbooks have been shredded and at least some of us clearly remember past classes, you have no homework tonight. Class dismissed." The class cheered and zoomed out of the room before McGonagall could change her mind. James swore however that at least five people gave him a 'praise you almighty one who relieved us of killer NEWT homework' gesture before joining the mob of happy students outside.

Once her class was gone, McGonagall turned to James and sighed. He sent her a cheeky grin, still trying to catch his breath after what had just happened. "Mr. Potter, is it? James Potter?"

James smirked and shook his hair, splattering everything within a five mile radius of him. "The one and only."

"Mr. Potter, why is it that I've only seen you two times-"

"Well, if you insist-" But McGonagall cut off his interruption with a stern look.

"Why is it that I've only seen you two times this year and both times you've proved to be sopping wet, thoroughly annoying and an undeniable troublemaker?"

James shrugged and wiped off his glasses. "I was born that way." He admitted. "Fabulous."

McGonagall sighed and went over to her desk. "I have something for you." She said, summoning what looked like a Post-it from one of its drawers.

James got excited. "Really? What is it? Is it like a super cool award for being able to handle that broomstick? Do I get to be Quidditch captain?"

McGonagall shook her head and continued scribbling on the notecard. "Nope, it's something that I think you'll find suits you even more."

James frowned in concentration. "Suits me even more than Quidditch Captain?" He thought. "Does a thing even exist?" "Are you sure I'm meant for this special something?"

"Oh yes." McGonagall replied, finalizing her signature on the slip of paper. "Seeing as you and your broomstick broke my window, shredded my students' textbooks and deprived them of much desired homework assignment, I think this will suit you quite well. See you tonight, Mr. Potter."

James wanted to point out that the words 'desire' and 'homework' should never be used right next to each other, but before he had a chance, McGonagall gave him the slip and sent him to his next class.

"Detention?!" Sirius shrieked, looking at James in disbelief. "For what? Surviving a hexed broom and giving her students the chance not only to use magic, but also to get out of homework? That's got to be one of the most ludicrous reasons ever, mate."

The young Marauders had met up again inside their 2nd class, History of Magic, and had spent its entirety thus far listening to James instead of the most boring Professor Binns.

"I know!" James exclaimed, frustrated. "And even when I explained to her that I didn't hex the broom, she still told me it was stupid of me to ride it even though I knew it was hexed. Apparently, I should've told Madam Hooch instead of endangering my life."

Peter gasped. "You totally could handle it though."

"That's what I told her! But she was all 'arrogance is not an excuse Mr. Potter, I'll see you at 7 o'clock, sharp.'" James said, imitating Professor McGonagall in a lofty voice.

Sirius rolled his eyes. "I assume you'll be out by ten though, want to go exploring after she lets you out?"

James shot him a mischievous grin. "You know it, mate. We need to find a way to get to Hogsmeade before third year anyway. Remus, Peter, you guys on board?"

Peter nodded excitedly and Remus looked at the three of them blankly. "Idiots…" He thought to himself, but oddly he couldn't convince himself to say no, so all that came out was an unusually determined "absolutely."

"We won't manage to sneak around the grounds for too long though." Remus pointed out. "We'll be caught, and then we'll all have detention. We either have to take a secret passageway or use an Invisibility cloak or something."

James smirked at them, his eyes glinting. "Why not both?"

"Are you serious?!" Peter shouted. ("No, I am." Sirius answered. Remus threw a textbook at him.) "That is so cool!"

James grinned. "It was my dad's. It's in my trunk upstairs. I say the second I get out of detention, we grab it and head out."

"Why not just bring it with you?" Sirius suggested. "And we'll meet you right outside her door."

"Then, it's off to Hogsmeade!"

The rest of the day passed without event. The Marauder's first day had been cursed with, as Sirius called it 'the biggest snoozes of them all'. After History of Magic was Herbology with the Slytherins, during which Sirius and James had a blast throwing Puffapods at Severus when Professor Sprout's back was turned. After that was Potions, and James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were proud to say that through their combined efforts, the four of them only made the Forgetfulness potion explode in their faces twenty times in the entire period, and Sirius's robes only caught on fire once.

After dinner in the great hall, they ran up to get James's invisibility cloak and (after procrastinating for as long as Remus would let him) James went down to the Transfiguration wing for detention.

He got lost several times, but finally managed to make it to McGonagall's classroom, where she was writing a few spells on the board. James knocked loudly and McGonagall turned away from the board, turned back, circled one spell in particular, and then went to let him in.

"Hi Minnie." James said, striding in with an air of confidence.

McGonagall looked at him, mortified. "What did you just call me Mr. Potter?" She demanded.

"Minnie. My friend Sirius and I were looking at the staff directory during potions while we were waiting for another cauldron because we melted our old one, and we came up with nicknames for everyone. You're Minnie now. It's official."

McGonagall rolled her eyes and sighed, already predicting that tomorrow morning with 1st year Gryffindors would be an interesting and migraine-causing one indeed. "Right, well, seeing as the rogue broomstick you attempted to ride completely destroyed page 421 (among other things) in 27 of my students' textbooks, your detention I think would be best spent rewriting that page on 27 pieces of parchment to be put back in." McGonagall lied. Of course, she didn't really have any intention on making James write anything, but she wanted to see if he was clever enough to figure this out on his own. After all, managing a broomstick like that must've taken some quick thinking and she could now clearly see that James's wand was specially made for Transfiguration. "When you're done with that, you are free to leave." She handed the mortified James a stack of 27 papers and a textbook.

James stared blankly at the papers. This would take forever to do.

It took about five minutes of James being gone for Sirius to realize that he was bored out of his mind. "Remus!" He shouted, throwing a pillow at Remus, who was peacefully reading a book.

"Hm?"Remus asked, unphased and not looking up.

"Where's James?"

"He's in detention, remember?"

Sirius groaned. Then, an idea struck him.

"Want to go bail him out?"

"Not necessarily."

"But Remus!"

Remus closed the book and stared at Sirius for a long time, thinking it over. If he said yes, they actually had a chance of reaching Honeydukes before it closed, and that meant chocolate. "Okay, fine." Remus agreed.

They dragged Pettigrew out of an exploding snap tournament in the common room and raced down to Transfiguration to get James out of there.

"What's he doing?" Peter asked, as Sirius peered in through the window.

"Looks like she's making him write something." Sirius answered, looking positively horrified at the mere thought.

"Ew."

Remus rolled his eyes. "So what's the plan?"

Sirius shrugged. "Well, I say two of us go in there and demand that she lets James go, and in the meantime, the other one goes and gets a werewolf or a giant or something equally awful and dangerous and starts screaming horribly so Minnie has to rush out and-"

"What is it with your fascination with werewolves?" Remus snapped hotly. Sirius raised an eyebrow at him, but backed off when he locked eyes with Remus's death glare.

"Fine, then we'll just go with part 1, and then if that doesn't work, we'll improvise." Sirius impatiently exclaimed. Then, before Remus could pull him back, he turned around and opened the door. Sirius, Remus and Peter strolled in, one after the other.

The second James saw his friends, he dropped the quill and burst into a wide grin.

"Professor McGonagall, we are the James-Potter-rescue-team and we demand that you let our friend go!" Sirius declared dramatically, acting as if he was on stage. Feeling a little silly, Remus and Peter lifted up their fists and shouted in agreement.

McGonagall rolled her eyes. "That's great boys. Now get out."

"Brilliant plan, Sirius." Remus muttered sardonically. Peter bent his head, pouted, and started to leave, but Sirius was not so willing to back down.

"I'm not leaving without James." Sirius stubbornly stated.

With a shake of her head, McGonagall pointed her wand at the door and it swung open for them to leave. "Mr. Potter has detention, this is the detention classroom, unless you have detention as well, I'm afraid you really must go back to the common room."

Sirius grinned broadly. 'Unless you have detention as well…' The words rung in his head over and over again. He now had a plan. "Hold in there, Jamie," Sirius declared as he walked up to Professor McGonagall's desk and, smirking devilishly, took her spectacles and began to stomp around the classroom saying "Mr. Potter has detention! I love Albus Dumbledore! Mr. Potter has detention! Meow! Mr. Potter has detention!" In a stunningly accurate impersonation of McGonagall. He then took out his wand and swung it around in the air flambouyantly for a few seconds, accidentally causing the quill James was holding to explode. Catching the hint, a horrified Remus winced and waved his wand and levitated cage after cage of animals for transfiguration, causing them to start screeching and hooting and howling in the process. Peter, who hadn't learned much magic yet and wasn't brazen enough to make a move as bold as Sirius, kicked over each and every single desk in the classroom. James was roaring with laughter now, not sure whether to be touched by his friend's dedication or embarrassed by their stupidity.

McGonagall touched her fingers to her temples like she was having a migraine, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop the tiniest of smiles from spreading across her lips. As moronic as they were to willingly walk into detention, McGonagall had to admit, she was impressed with these boys' determination.

"Fine!" She declared. "Detention, for all of you! Mr. Pettigrew, fix all these desks. Mr. Lupin, calm down those water-glass-animals you seem to have thoroughly traumatized. Mr. Black, just… try not blow anything up." McGonagall said, summoning her spectacles back and starting to leave. "I have a staff meeting, but when I return, I expect the desks to be right-side-up, the animals to be peacefully sleeping, and the textbook pages to be rewritten." And with that, she almost left the classroom until, hand inches away from the handle, she turned to James and said "Oh, and Mr. Potter, I think you'll find that's a soft J." Then she was gone.

Shaking off his confusion at McGonagall's incoherent statement, James grinned and pulled his fellow Gryffindors into a Marauder hug. "You didn't have to do that, mates."He pointed out.

Sirius scoffed. "What, and let you have all the fun in here without us? I don't think so."

Remus rolled his eyes and pulled out the hug with a lopsided grin. "I have no idea how to calm these things down." He admitted. "Animals hate me." It was true, nearly every animal (magical or non) that Remus had met seemed to have been able to sniff out the fact that he wasn't truly human, and became positively terrified to the point of retaliation by that. He reckoned he was the only 11 year old to have ever been attacked by a Pygmy Puff.

Remus carefully approached the cage that McGonagall kept mice to be turned into snuff-boxes. They squeaked at him indignantly and Remus realized that it would probably make things even worse if he got close to try and calm them down.

Peter sighed and started to stack up the desks again. Sirius plopped down on James's table and flipped through his papers. "What'cha doing?"

"Minnie's making me copy down a textbook page 27 times." James complained, picking up his quill with distaste.

"Yuck." Sirius took a blank roll of parchment and stared at it. "I wonder if there's some way to turn this blank paper into a finished product." He mused.

James grinned and leaned back in his chair lazily. "Yeah…" He glanced over at the board McGonagall was writing on before she left. "Oh, and Mr. Potter, I think you'll find that's a soft J." The words clouded his head as Sirius continued to complain loudly that detention was boring. James stared at the spell written on the board a raised an eyebrow. "What's the worst that can happen?" He thought to himself, and, aiming his wand at a blank roll of parchment, gave it a flick and muttered the spell, remembering to keep every single J written on the board soft. Instantly, the parchment turned exactly like the one from the textbook.

Grinning like a madman, James shoved the paper in Sirius's face. "This just got interesting…" Sirius mused under his breath. "Remy, Pewee, check this out." And before Remus and Peter could reprimand Sirius for the ridiculous nicknames, Sirius folded the parchment into a paper airplane and threw it at them.

"James, this is really advanced transfiguration." Peter pointed out, impressed. James winked and performed the spell again, and again, and again, pointing out that he had just performed at least 3rd year magic, until Sirius (confused as to how this kid was able to use such complicated magic without any experience and fed up with James's constant accomplishment) declared that it must be super easy and claimed he could easily do twice as many scrolls as James. Remus shook his head nervously and Peter watched on in excitement as Sirius took a piece of parchment, waved his wand and (forgetting about the soft J hint McGonagall had told them after she left) ducked under a desk as the parchment exploded into flames.

The other three laughed as Sirius cursed; and within no time, the desks were upright, the animals calmed (disgruntled, but calmed) and the textbooks rewritten. With no McGonagall to keep them in check and no other way to occupy their short attention spans, Remus, Peter, Sirius and James slid out of the door and raced down the halls of Hogwarts.

"So, I believe the deal was Hogsmeade?" James asked, hearing the clock chime eight.

Sirius grinned mischievously. "But of course. How else are we to get to Zonkos and restock?"

They snuck out the gates of Hogwarts, concealed by James's invisibility cloak and ran across the grounds, following James and Sirius's mangled, hand-me-down directions.

"I think Narcissa mentioned something about turning left at a tree."

"Which tree? There happen to be a lot of them around here."

"Er… I dunno, she didn't specify."

"My dad said you're supposed to curve around Hagrid's hut and head north."

"Where's Hagrid's hut?"

"Which way's north?"

"Bella mentioned something about going through the forbidden forest howling like a wolf. Think she was just trying to get me killed though."

"My mom said there's a black path coming out of the Herbology wing."

"I can't even see my own feet, James, how the bloody hell are we supposed to see a path?"

"You can't see your feet because they're under an invisibility cloak, Sirius."

"Ah, right. But still."

The four of them had disagreement after disagreement and bicker after bicker on how to get to Hogsmeade for what felt like hours until a huge roaring sound shut them up.

"What was that?" Peter whimpered, backing away cautiously.

Sirius grinned and said in a creepy voice, "Maybe it was a werewolf- Ow, Remus! I'm sorry, alright?"

"Maybe it was Gryffindor's gryffin or something wickedly cool like that."

Hearing another horrible whooshing sound, like something heavy and spiky being pulled through air, Remus whipped around and came face to face with a huge, swinging branch, roaring with power like a roller coaster as it ripped through the air. "Or maybe it was that!" He screamed, wrenching his friends down and narrowly avoiding the particularly violent branch.

James straightened his glasses and stared up in awe. A huge tree stood just meters away from them. It had nearly a dozen, huge, spiked branches that all seemed to be rushing towards the four boys, prepared to turn him into a Potter pancake.

Sirius let out an ear-splitting, feminine scream and immediately, four shocked, scratched and shrieking kids scrambled as far away from the tree's squash zone as was possible to go.

"What- what was that thing?!" Sirius gasped as they zoomed back inside the castle.

James shook his head breathlessly, clutching his side. Everyone was at loss for breath, words and even jokes, all they could do was sprint up to the Gryffindor tower like the tree was still right on their heels.

Staggering into their dormitory, it was a full five minutes of laying there in petrified silence before anyone had the nerve to open their mouth.

"That… happened." Sirius exclaimed.

"Indeed it did." James agreed, awe-struck.

"That was the Whomping Willow." Remus pointed out informatively, not looking up from the floor. "It hits back."

"I never thought I'd be one to pick favorites, but that thing is now officially my least favorite tree." Sirius observed quietly. Peter giggled and James grinned nervously.

"First Hogsmeade trip= fail. But that's okay." He assured. "This is the rags part of our rags to riches story, mates. Tomorrow night, we'll know not to run into that… thing. We'll find our way around this place illegally in no time." James flashed them all a smirk.

Remus groaned and turned over in his bed. He glanced up at the calendar Sirius had given him. 21 days. He had 21 days left until another horrible transformation. Little did he know however, that those 21 days would soon turn out to be the most interesting, most fun, most hilarious, and overall best 21 days he'd had in a long time.