Chapter 3 - First Day at Hogwarts

The four of them were late down to the breakfast table the next morning. The sugar and adrenaline high of the night before seemed to have taken its toll and they were groggy, tired and, in Sirius' case, more than a little irritable.

"What's got your wand in a knot?" James asked as they settled themselves down and Remus poured them all pumpkin juice.

Sirius had been energetic and cheerful on the train and at dinner last night but this morning all his enthusiasm seemed to have been replaced by a dark cloud. He had already snapped at Peter who had apparently taken too long in the shower and now he was glowering at them all and not saying a word. It was all rather strange.

"Nothing to concern yourself with." Sirius said very unhelpfully, pulling a plate of scrambled eggs towards him.

James cast his mind around for something to say. He didn't like silences, and as Remus and Peter were on the quieter side and Sirius clearly wasn't bringing any conversation to the table himself, James supposed it was up to him. "So, what do you reckon we'll learn today then?" He said, grinning eagerly at the others.

"How to stop asking stupid questions." Sirius said irritably. "McGonagall's right there with the timetables. We'll find out soon enough."

James put down his fork and glared at Sirius. "Why are you being such a -"

But he was distracted by the arrival of the post owls. There were about a hundred of them, all flying around the rafters and every so often zooming down to drop their individual letter or package on the table in front of someone. It was quite a wonderful sight to behold.

Lily Evans beside him was laughing in delight as she watched the birds' flights too. James turned to grin at her, hoping she might be willing to bury the hatchet, but she gave him a disparaging sort of look and turned her back on him again. Feeling a little ruffled, James took the letter his parents had sent him and began to read.

It was an incredible comfort, seeing his mother's tidy writing and hearing how his parents' day had been. His mother wrote that they'd felt very sad saying goodbye to him but they'd had a lovely day out in London and their house elf Ethel had cooked them a special meal to cheer them up. The house felt very quiet without him but she and his dad were so proud of him for being sorted into Gryffindor and his dad had already bought him a scarf and banner in his new house colours. James wondered how he'd managed that if they'd only just got the news last night...

Grinning, he looked up at his friends. Remus and Peter were still reading their letters and smiling, but Sirius, he noticed, didn't look pleased at all with whatever it was his letter from home contained. In fact, he looked a little like he wanted to be sick.

"What's up?" James asked, a little surprised by fear in his friend's grey eyes as he looked back at James.

"Oh, nothing." Sirius said, quickly tearing the letter into little pieces which he dropped on the floor. "Just... well, at least she didn't send a howler eh?" He gave James a painful looking smile.

James didn't understand at all. Why would Sirius' mother (if that's who he'd been referring to) send her son a screaming letter on his first day of school? What kind of mother would do that? He doubted his own mum would send him something like that even if he'd blown up McGonagall's office (not that he'd ever do that of course...) He was so lost in his own contemplations that he didn't even notice Professor McGonagall had arrived at their table and was handing out timetables.

"Thanks mum," he said, taking the parchment from her without thinking. And then he looked up, their eyes met, and he'd have given absolutely anything in the world to have melted into a puddle and slipped through the cracks of the floor. "I mean thanks professor." He amended hastily, but of course the damage was already done.

As Sirius and Peter roared with laughter beside him, McGonagall gave him what he thought might have been a rare smile. "You're welcome Potter." She said. She frowned at Sirius and Peter then moved off to hand out timetables to the girls.

"Oh shut up." James said, throwing a bit of toast at Sirius who was almost crying with laughter still. He grinned in spite of himself. His momentary embarrassment had at least done some good. Sirius was his usual cheerful self again.

Though they teased him all the way to transfiguration ("I wonder what 'mum' is going to teach us today?") he took it good naturedly. James knew a bit of banter always came with having friends and he didn't mind it in the least.

They sat at the back in the classroom, where they considered to be the best place for a whispered conversation, and quite frankly, James didn't want to be anywhere near his teacher right now.

McGonagall set them up transfiguring matchsticks into needles, a task James found ridiculously easy as his wand was good for transfiguration and it seemed he had a natural instinct for the spellwork. He successfully achieved the spell on the second attempt and had worked his way through the entire box of matches in the first ten minutes. He made a little round wall with them in the upside of his wooden desk, sticking his inkpot in the middle like a prisoner and having quite a jolly time of it until Peter asked him for help.

After transfiguration, they had defence against the dark arts, which was taught by an old but spritely witch called Professor Richards. She set them up practicing simple jinxes and hexes while the other attempted to block it. "Excellent." Sirius said, rubbing his hands together and grinning. "I've always wanted to learn how to defend myself properly. My cousin Bellatrix won't be able to try out any of her horrible new curses on me now."

Wondering for the second time that morning what on earth was the matter with his new friend's family, James smiled back. "Well I've always wanted to hex Snivellus." He told him, spotting the greasy-haired boy from the train the other day, standing awkwardly over by Lily Evans. How would he look with tap-dancing feet and twitching ears?

As it turned out, very funny indeed. The pair of them laughed themselves silly at the sight of the boy, who was looking wildly around the room as he sought the source of his predicament. "Looking good, Snivelly!" Sirius called, doubled over with mirth as he waved at him.

Professor Richard quickly restored Snape's ears and feet to normal and took ten house points from Gryffindor. Someone else who hadn't found their joke caught up with them on their way to lunch.

"James Potter, I want a word with you." Lily Evans said, blocking their path and causing Sirius and Peter to groan.

"What?" James said. Lily was glaring at him in a way no one had ever glared at him before. He had the strangest sensation he was staring into two fierce bright green suns.

"You're a beast." She said. "What did you do that to poor Sev for?"

Who the ruddy hell was Sev?! Oh, she meant Snivellus.

"Oh Evans, it's no big deal!" He laughed. "It was only Snivellus and it was just a joke."

"It might have been funny to you but it wasn't funny to Sev. You hurt his feelings." She folded her arms crossly over her chest and glared at him.

"Ooh, his feelings." Sirius mocked in a nasal sort of voice and Peter laughed.

"Yes, his feelings" Lily snapped, turning to face him now instead. "And if you don't care about those, you're as big a bully as he is." She gestured furiously at James.

"Wait a minute!" James said, feeling stung. He wasn't a bully. She'd got him all wrong. But Lily it seemed had exhausted her patience with him. She gave him one last withering glare and turned on her heel and marched back off over to her friends.

James gaped after her, feeling a bit like he'd just been clubbed over the head with something heavy. "What's her problem?!" He demanded of his friends, but Peter wasn't looking at him and Sirius just shrugged. "Dunno mate. Don't let her get to you."

"But I don't get it! Didn't she see the bloke? How was that not funny?!"

He kept up his angry self-justification all throughout lunch, by the end of which he was beginning to suspect all three of his new friends were growing thoroughly sick of him. He did his best to forget about Lily and her ridiculous defence of Snivellus in charms, though as she sat a few rows in front of them, he couldn't help thinking about her. After charms they had potions, for which they needed to descend to the dungeons, where the Slytherins lived.

"Ah, the sour scent of Slytherin." James said, sniffing the air in imitation of a hound and getting a laugh from Sirius. "Blimey they even look different to us." He added as a group of students in their green-embossed robes billowed past with their noses in the air.

"It's all the inbreeding." Sirius said sagely. "Seriously, look it up. They're not so much family trees as family sticks."

"Yours included?" James quipped, wondering if his new friend would be prepared to joke about his family so soon after his controversial sorting.

"Especially mine." Sirius said forcefully. "That's why they're always so angry. Can you imagine marrying your cousin? I can't think of anything worse personally."

"Not an option for me. I have none."

"You lucky beggar. Take one of mine."

"I think Pete's already called shotgun, mate."

They arrived at potions to find Professor Slughorn perched on the edge of Slytherin Roma Lestrange's desk like a toad on a lily pad, smiling at her as if she were a particularly juice fly.

"Ah!" He cried when he spotted James and the others. "Is that all of us? Well let's make a start of it then." And, pushing himself off Roma's desk, he waddled to the front of the class and unfurled his register at leisure.

Registration took twice as long in potions as it had in any other class as Slughorn kept pausing on names he recognised. He seemed particularly aggrieved when he reached Sirius and looked up to see him seated beside James and wearing Gryffindor robes. "You should be in my house!" He cried, pointing a fat finger at him and sounding very put out.

"I assure you it was nothing personal, sir." Sirius said and James snorted into his fist.

"Well it is most irregular!" Slughorn said crossly. "What did your parents say about it?"

"They were delighted, sir." Sirius said and James wondered if anyone else caught the sarcasm.

Slughorn frowned at Sirius as though he had tricked him in some way then gave a "hmpf" and went back to the register.

Though he set them up working on a potion to alleviate itching, he didn't seem to be too interested in doing any actual teaching. Instead he wandered up and down the aisle, stopping to pause at various students' desks, but not to peer into their cauldron as James might expect. He seemed to simply just want to chat.

"Walrus en route." Sirius muttered to James, ducking his head and cutting up his shrivelfig with renewed vigour as Slughorn made his slow plodding way towards their table.

"Ah, James Potter!" Slughorn cried, finally reaching his desk and settling his large bottom on the edge of it. "Last time I saw you you weren't yet potty trained."

"That's nice, sir." James said, doing his best to ignore Sirius who was vibrating with laughter beside him.

"How is dear Monty? Is he still inventing? I must say, Sleekeazy's was quite the most wonderful creation, and I'm sure I detected the teensiest bit of lavender in there too. I told all my friends I told 'em, 'that Monty Potter. He was in my class in potions. I wondered when he'd use that lavender trick the two of us came up with.'"

James smiled. "I'm afraid he never mentions you, sir."

Slughorn looked almost as put out as when he'd found out Sirius was in Gryffindor. "And what about you, Sirius?" He said, causing the other boy to look up in alarm. "I hear your grandfather Arcturus was recently nominated for an Order of Merlin. What an honour that must be. Tell me, do you see much of your grandfather?"

"Unfortunately yes, sir."

Slughorn it seemed had no response for this either.

"Nosy prat." Sirius muttered once Slughorn had finally left their table. "Not a very good teacher either, is he?"

He'd kept them talking for so long he hadn't even registered the bell for the end of the lesson, and then there had been such a flurry of activity to leave that none of them had even had the chance to test their potions or bottle up any samples. Slughorn was left with the mess, which he vanished with a wave of his wand, and they hurriedly put their cauldrons back over to the side (they couldn't exactly carry them round the castle with them) and made their way back to the common room where they dashed through their homework before heading down to the great hall for dinner.

James and Sirius chatted happily to everyone and anyone and soon attracted the attention of a pair of red-haired twins called Gideon and Fabian Prewett, who, seeming to sense kindred spirits in them, came over to chat.

"We couldn't help overhearing your very excellent conversation, and wanted to offer some pearls of wisdom from our several years' professional rule-breaking." Gideon said.

"Hogwarts is fun, but it can be desperately dull too." Fabian agreed. "You want to be on the right side of it."

"The fun side." Gideon clarified. "You want to have as much fun as possible."

"And we think we can help." Fabian said, grinning.

"That's brilliant!" James told Gideon as he explained to him and the others about the secret passageway the twins had discovered to get out of the castle.

"There's quite a few shortcuts too." Fabian said. "You want to look out for the one behind a tapestry on the first floor, but mind out for the trick step!"

"And there's a brilliant room behind a portrait of some ballet-dancing trolls on the seventh floor corridor."

James pulled out a scrap of paper he'd used in charms and started jotting everything the twins told him down. He wanted to make sure he remembered everything.

Gideon laughed. "I like your enthusiasm. Just be careful McGonagall doesn't catch you."

"Yeah, she doesn't exactly share our sense of humour." Fabian agreed.

"What was it she said to us last term?" Gideon asked.

"We were 'the worse troublemakers she's had the misfortune to teach'. Or words to that effect." Fabian answered. "But maybe you'll give us a run for a money, eh?"

James promised them that he would and, that night, cornered his friends in the dormitory to insist they accompany him on the first great castle exploration of '71.

"I'm in." Sirius said, who had been lounging on his bed, flicking idly through one of James' magazines. He looked at his watch. "It's past curfew though."

"Brilliant!" James grinned, ignoring the latter information. He turned to the others. "Remus? Peter?"

Remus looked uncomfortable. "Sirius is right, it is late. Can't we go another time?"

"Absolutely not!" James cried, leaping onto Remus' bed and seizing his friend by the shoulders. "Remus!" He pleaded. "Now is the perfect time to explore! Think of all those secret passageways just dying to be found, and here we are tucked up in bed like good little boys. I can't bear it!"

"I hate to admit it, but Potter's right." Sirius said, getting to his feet and pulling on his cloak. "I mean, how are we meant to find any secret passageways when the castle's full of interfering students? No, there's nothing else for it. We go tonight."

James grinned and went to stand beside him. "Peter, you in?"

Peter looked quickly at Remus and then shook his head. "I'm staying here." He said stoutly. "You can both risk your necks if you want but I won't have McGonagall sending any letters home in my first week of Hogwarts."

"She won't do that." Sirius said a little quickly.

"I don't care if she does." James said, grabbing his own cloak. "My dad would be disappointed if I didn't go exploring in my first week at Hogwarts. Well, you two can be a bore if you want, but when we find a secret passageway to Hogsmeade and bring back sweets from Honeydukes, we won't share." And ignoring the hurt look on Peter's face, the pair of them left the dormitory.

The castle was, as James had hoped, wonderfully deserted. The only sound they heard was their footsteps as they wandered along the dark stone halls with the dimly flickering wall lamps. They found several of the shortcuts the twins had told them about, but couldn't understand what was so special about the one-eyed witch. Maybe there was something important the twins had forgotten to tell them.

A number of the portraits stopped to chat as they walked past. One, a knight called Sir Cadogan, commended them for their courage and adventurous spirits, another, a very old man called Rudolph Fletcher, proceeded to give them a lengthy history of the castle and the headmasters who had occupied it previously, which they listened to politely.

"Before Dumbledore there was Armando Dippet." He told them reminiscently. "He insisted all staff and students leave the castle for the holidays. That did get people's backs up. And before him there was Phineas Nigellus Black… Most unpopular headmaster Hogwarts has ever had. He was there in my time. Awful man…"

"Any relation?" James asked Sirius.

"Unfortunately, yes." He said, just as he'd said earlier to Slughorn and James wondered again what was wrong with his friend's family.

They wandered round a while longer, upsetting a few sleeping portraits with the lights of their wands, before deciding they should probably call it a night and turning back in the direction of Gryffindor tower. They'd almost made it to the corridor with the portrait of the fat lady when they came upon a scruffy looking grey cat.

"Hello!" James cried, dropping to his knees and reaching out to stroke the creature. James loved cats. They had one at home, a ginger tom called Percy. The Potters had owned ginger toms called Percy since James' grandfather had come up with the tradition last century. Theirs was now the seventh of its kind.

"Oi!"

James jumped and spun in the direction of the noise. There, a few feet away, was a short man with a crooked back, teeth to match and long, straggly hair. James recognised him instantly as the caretaker, Argus Filch, famous for hating students. "Awfully late for you to be out of your beds." The man said, hobbling forwards and grabbing hold of Sirius. "You look like you could both be first years too. The headmaster will not be happy to hear about this..." The delight in his voice was unmistakable.

James felt suddenly panicked. This man wouldn't really take them to Dumbledore would he?

"People say he's softer than Dippet, but it's not true." Filch said with a malevolent smile, taking hold of James now too. "He's got a real dark side. And when I take you to him, you filthy little whelps, and tell him what you've been up to, he won't hold back. You'll be begging for mercy before too long."

"That's a lie!" James said, pulling out of the man's grip and glaring up at him. "Dumbledore wouldn't hurt us. And you're not even a teacher, you're a caretaker."

He hadn't said just a caretaker. His parents had taught him better manners than that. Though maybe in this man's case they might have forgiven the rudeness.

"You're just a caretaker?!" Sirius said staring rudely at the man. "Well we don't have to do what you say. Come on, James." And, grabbing James by the arm, he broke into a run.

James, who was quite fit, easily kept pace, and the pair of them arrived, two minutes later, outside the portrait of the fat lady. "Hogsmeade high street" James said, giving her the password that would allow them entry, and she reluctantly swung inwards.

They collapsed to the floor inside the common room and James thought he could just about make out the sound of thundering footsteps lumbering down the hallway in the distance.

He turned to Sirius who had turned to him and they burst out laughing. They laughed for so long and so hard that they didn't notice that the portrait door had swung open behind them.

"Good riddance," Sirius said, wiping his eyes and sitting up at last. "He'll be blundering along that hallway 'til morning, the stupid, sneaking squib."

"Ahem."

They both jumped and looked up. There, standing over them, was Professor McGonagall. And she was not laughing.

"Ten points from Gryffindor, Black, for insulting language and disrespect to a member of staff. Because, gentlemen, for your information, Mr Filch is a member of staff. And as such, he has a right to respect from everyone in this castle, including, I am furious I need to tell you, two disobedient little schoolboys. How dare you go marauding around the castle out of hours? I am giving you both detention, and if the punishment alone doesn't do it, maybe the shame of being the first two to receive one this early into your school careers will."

She glared at them and James looked down at the carpet. From Sirius' uncomfortable shifting beside him, he knew his friend was feeling the heat too.

"Do you have anything you wish to say for yourselves?" McGonagall said, forcing James to look up at her at last.

Not a single thing came into his head. Well, one thing did, but he didn't think that was really what she meant. He shook his head and looked down again.

"What does marauding mean?" Sirius said, and James grinned, despite the situation not being in the least bit amusing. It was exactly what he had been thinking.

Professor McGonagall's nostrils flared as she turned to Sirius. "That, Mr Black, is hardly the point. Do you have anything to say for the fact that you were out of bed out of hours, is what I meant!"

Sirius shook his head too. "No, ma'am."

"Very well. I shall see you both tomorrow. Goodnight, gentlemen." And she turned and left the common room.

James turned to Sirius just as Sirius turned to James. "Marauding." The said at the same time.

"It sounds pretty cool." James said.

"It sounds brilliant." Sirius agreed.

"So what does it mean?"

"Obviously being brilliant enough to set school records for exploring the castle."

"Er, I think she said a record for getting detention so early in our school careers."

"Isn't it the same thing?"

"Only if you get caught."

"Which we won't next time."

They were quiet for a while and then James spoke again. "How about the marauders?"

"What for?"

"Well, y'know... for us." James said. He wasn't at all sure Sirius would agree. Maybe Sirius didn't want to be friends with him. Maybe, like his family, he would have rather been in Slytherin house with Mulciber and Nott, who he seemed to already know. Maybe James should just forget the whole idea.

"You mean like a group name?"

James nodded. He could say no if he wanted. He was sure he would...

Sirius turned to him and there was such genuine enthusiasm in his grey eyes that all James' fears melted away entirely. "I think it's brilliant." He said, grinning at him.

...

A/N: For anyone who's interested, I took the idea of the Potters having a recurring ginger cat from Winston Churchill, who always had a ginger tom named Jock. When he left his country home (Chartwell) to the National Trust there was a stipulation that there must always be one living there. The current Jock is apparently also the 7th of his kind!