The Marauders: Year Three | #Wattys2016

Pony Stories

Pony Stories

James and Sirius ran along the foundation of the castle, across the grounds, until they'd reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest at the far north side of the castle. They ducked into the trees near the edge, where they could still see through the trunks, but were unlikely to be seen themselves. They sat down, catching their breath, with their backs to a trunk, laughing to themselves.

"Good one, James," Sirius said as he threw himself down into the dirt.

"Can't believe we've just done that," James said, grinning.

"Can't believe it took us so long to do it!" Sirius replied.

"Yeah, blimey, that was boring," James agreed, shaking his head, "I could feel my brain turning to mush."

With a smirking grin, Sirius chided him, "Your brains are always mush when you're looking at Evans... and let's face it, that's all you were doing."

James laughed, "Yeah, well, she was more interesting than a bunch of flying specks." He reached into his robes pocket and pulled out the two Zoobooks that Dora had sent along to them. "Besides, perhaps we can start out worthwhile studies."

"Here, here!" Sirius said, taking hold on the Wolves book. He studied the majestic creature on the cover a moment before flipping open the cover and starting to read. James did, too, and the two of them sat there, the moonlight for a lamp, taking in information about the two creatures, now and then turning to one another to point out some fact they'd found in the book. "Alpha-male is the leader of the pack," said Sirius, pointing to a photo that showed one wolf standing amongst a bunch of them lying about on the ground at his feet.

James looked at the photo.

"Says here," Sirius continued, reading on, "That wolves that are alone - lone wolves - they get real vicious and nasty and they tend to be more likely to attack other wolves and try to demand the place of alpha in a new pack and these packs tend to be more volatile until another wolf takes over the position and puts the lone wolf as beta, which is second in charge, or even omega, which is like the lowest rank."

"Remus would be a lone wolf, yeah?" James asked, "Since he doesn't have a pack."

Sirius rubbed his chin, "Do you reckon werewolves have packs?"

James shrugged, "Perhaps."

Sirius considered this a moment, then he said, "So to become the alpha, the wolves will fight and whoever wins the fight is alpha and the loser becomes beta and submits to the alpha."

"So you need to submit to Rey?" James asked.

Sirius hummed thoughtfully, "Well I tried that and he tried to eat me as a result, so..."

"Well it's not as though you could fight - and win - against a werewolf," James pointed out, "Snuffles isn't a wolf, he's a regular dog."

Sirius nodded slowly, "And Remus isn't a wolf, either, he's a boy in wolf's clothing, deep down."

"Still more powerful than a regular dog," James said.

"Maybe," Sirius answered.

Wanting to get Sirius off the idea before he got some hairbrained scheme, James held his book up, "Look, there's a chart here that shows you how to tell what kind of stag you're looking at by it's antlers. I'll have to give this a go in the mirror later."

Sirius looked over, "Hey that's helpful."

"Very, then I'll be able to learn more specifically about my sort of deer and --"