The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

Scared Ickle Little Beans

Scared Ickle Little Beans

October was turning out to be crisp, cooler than usual, and the first frost nearly killed all the pumpkins Hagrid had been growing for Halloween on the night of the 7th. Hagrid could be seen out in all hours of the night wrapping blankets about the pumpkins in the patch and lighting fires around the vegetable garden with Fluffy, the three-headed dog, tagging along behind him. "Right creepy little thing, isn't it?" Peter asked, eyeing Fluffy one evening as the boys trudged back from the Flying Lessons with the first years down on the pitch.

"I think it's wicked," Sirius said reverently. "Not everyone's got a three-headed dog, you know."

"You don't say?" Remus smirked.

Discouraging as it was, James had a feeling that Andy Woodhouse would be picking Frank Longbottom as Captain for the Quidditch team. There were only a couple more lessons left for Andy to make his choice and James just didn't think he'd been doing so well. Sure, he'd managed to teach Wally how to do a barrell roll, and Liam had improved his grip on his broom considerably thanks to James, but Frank had taken Oliver under his wing and it was thanks to him that Oliver was much steadier on his broomstick than anyone had ever suspected him to be. Dexter kept singing his praises, though, and Vivian insisted that James was the best flyer she'd ever seen in her entire life ("not very impressive seeing as you didn't know broomsticks could fly two months ago," said Macy in a snarky tone). But Frank was clearly a better friend to Andy, and he'd actually taken it upon himself several times to go out with the kids on nights that wasn't flying practice so they could try their hands at different weather types. Granted, James wouldn't have minded doing this, too but he had Other Things to Do as well.

For instance, there was a good deal of homework for the fifth year classes, seeing as it was their O.W.L year and all the teachers seemed to take that as a cue to absolutely clobber their freetime with homework. Plus he had Sirius bugging him about preparations for some Big Plan that he'd concocted for the full moon (an evening of marauding unlike any we have yet partaken in, he said, and other than his commands for James to help him fetch supplies from about the castle with the invisibility cloak, he would say no more about it). Also, there were the glorious evenings that he had come to think of as Stag Nights.

Because he never knew when Lily Evans was going to go visit the stag - and he couldn't very well ask for a schedule of events from her - James had taken to sneaking back out of the dormitory every night to sit under the invisibility cloak for exactly two hours, doing homework by dim moonlight, waiting to see if Evans would come down to sneak out to see the stag. Most nights, he'd wasted his time, and he'd finally trudge back to the dormitory, positively knockered and fall into bed with an air of disappointment settling upon him. But twice he had been rewarded for his diligence. Twice, she'd come downstairs, sneaking along, careful not to let the steps creak, and she would slip out the portrait hole door and down the corridor, followed by James, out into the forest on the edge of the grounds of Hogwarts. Twice, he'd snuck through the trees to change into the stag, only to chicken out on telling her again that it was him beneath those tall antlers, him that she'd been hugging and whispering her cares to.

It was as a stag that James learned about Lily's terrible summer with her sister, and how she dreamed of having a family one day, with two children - "A boy and a girl," she explained, "so he can grow up and protect her.. And besides, a little boy with his father is the most adorable thing in all of the world and ... whoever I marry... I'll take so many pictures of them together..." her eyes had glistened as though already seeing it in her mind. James had never wanted it more. And she told him about her parents and how proud but clueless they were, and how much she worried about them, about Voldemort killing muggles - for there'd been a brash outbreak of muggle murders in the first week of October. She told him how she worried about the world and Minchum's granddaughter was weighing heavily on her mind, ever since she'd seen a photo of the little girl in the Daily's Prophet...