The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

Popcorn

Popcorn

The Gryffindor common room was abuzz with nervousness. Everyone was talking about the news in some capacity or another, everyone was afraid of what would happen next. The tension was palpable. Wally, Oliver, Dexter, and Liam were sitting on the couch by the fireplace - the other first years working with Lily Evans and Ali Prewitt on homework across the room but those four were shirking it off because they'd finally managed to get the couch to themselves and they had more important things to talk about than charms homework anyway.

"Can't believe Sirius Black hasn't come to tell us to sod off!" Dexter said excitedly, hugging the couch cushions that were their prize. Wally was laying across his cushion, using Oliver as a pillow and kicking his feet into Liam's side. "He always tells us to sod off by now! And they're here, too! Frank Longbottom was talking to Sirius Black before."

"Did you hear Sirius earlier, at dinner?" asked Oliver, "He thinks Minchum's grand-daughter is dead. But Remus said he didn't think so."

"He called You Know Who Moldy Voldy, too!" Wally said. "I reckon Sirius Black is the bravest bloke in the world. Imagine having the gumption to say that about the most evilest wizard in the world?"

Liam laughed, "Is it bravery or idiocy?"

Wally looked up at him, offended for Sirius. "He's not an idiot."

"Saying stuff like that's a good way to get on the Kill List," said Liam solemnly, "It's like suicide! You say stuff like that and You Know Who's gonna come after you. And nobody lives once You Know Who comes after them. They always die." He stared blankly at his feet a second.

Wally looked at Oliver uneasily. Dexter shifted in his seat, "You alright, Liam?"

Liam nodded. "Spiffing." He started to get up though, and was standing before the couch, about to say that he was going to bed when there was a funny sound from the stairs...

"What was that?" asked Oliver, looking over at the stairs to the boys dormitories. Everyone in the common room was looking. There was a funny... popping... sound... and shouting...

Lily Evans was on her feet and running toward the stairs, "What in the world --" she was halfway up them when something hit her in the nose. Not anything big, something small... like a snowflake... or... she breathed deeply. That smell... it was just like... like the cinema... like the concession stand, like ---

And suddenly an absolute avalanche of popcorn came rushing down the stairs - like a tsunami, and it burst over the edge of the steps spraying buttery kernels of corn every which way, exploding buttery pops of crunchiness snowing down over the common room, filling the stairwell until very quickly Lily was knee deep in it. She yelled up the stairs, "SIRIUS! REMUS! PETER! ... POTTER!!!!! I KNOW YOU LOT ARE BEHIND THIS!"

There was silence from the top of the stairwell.

But the popcorn kept multiplying. It seemed every time a kernel of it touched another, they exploded into at least three more kernels so that it exponentially grew and grew... and the floor was filling up and the girls were running for their dorms and a couple people were going for the portrait hole. The first years were wide-eyed, standing on the couch like it was an island in a popcorn ocean, clinging at one another in amused terror. Wally grabbed a handful of the kernels and started munching on it as Oliver asked, "Can you drown in popcorn?!"

Lily was struggling against the tsunami of popcorn, trying to get up the stairs to find the Marauders. She was actually sort of looking forward to giving Potter a detention... but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get up there, the popcorn just kept multiplying! She shrieked and slipped and went down, the popcorn catching her so she didn't really fall down the stairs so much as slid down and sank below the yellow kernels at the bottom like a fragile shipping item among packing peanuts.