The Marauders: Year Six #Wattys2017

The Dancing Queen

The Dancing Queen

Sirius would never have told anyone but the Disapparating class was the most terrifying thing he'd ever done. He was very, very glad that Frank Longbottom was in the class with him. If Frank hadn't been, he probably would've chickened out for real and ended up waiting to go with James and Remus during the second term. But with Frank there it was a teensy bit better.

Even on the very first day, though, Frank was busy hanging about with Andy, Jackson, and Tobias, all of whom were in the class as well. Sirius couldn't blame him, he knew if the tables were turned and the other Marauders were in the class that they would have accidentally overlooked including Frank, too, and so Sirius didn't complain when, although Frank did his best to include Sirius with them, it wasn't quite the same as Sirius had hoped.

Top it off, when the doors opened to the Great Hall and the examiners from the Ministry came in, Sirius nearly choked to see the stout, round figure of that toad of a woman, Dolores Umbridge, and a short, nervous-looking man who glanced about as they walked across the hall.

"Well shit," Sirius had murmured, seeing her.

"What?" Frank had turned around to see what had made Sirius swear.

"That toad woman, she's horrible," Sirius had hissed, nodding toward where Umbridge now stood looking at a clipboard.

"Isn't that the woman who gave the O.W.L.s and the N.E.W.T.s last term?" Jackson asked.

"Does she really look like a toad?" asked Andy.

"Toads are better looking," Sirius replied.

The lot of them laughed.

But even as he laughed about her, Sirius couldn't help but feel a bit unnerved by her presence. He could still feel her leaning over the desk and glaring at him and counting down his time to complete his Transfiguration O.W.L. over the summer in her office. He started sweating in his palms. What if she decided to do something like that to him again? What if she purposely taught him how to do it wrong so that he ended up splinched? The idea of splinching made Sirius Black's stomach knot up.

He had hoped she would go away once she'd had a quick look about. But there was no such luck as Umbridge stood at the front of the room being intimidating for the rest of the time, too, glancing over the students as they were commanded to grab two great big plastic hoops each from the back of the room and to spread out in the available space throughout the Great Hall and stand inside one of the two hoops.

Now it was the second class already and Sirius was dragging his feet through the entrance hall. He grabbed the two hoops from the stack of them by the door and went back to his spot in the center of the Great Hall, tossing down the two hoops.

The lessons themselves weren't hard and Umbridge did seem to only be there for observational purposes. She had yet to speak during the class. Instead, the twitchy short man taught them the steps of thinking - deliberation - and turning with determination to reach their destination. They were supposed to be disapparting from one hoop to the other - which seemed a rather boring first disapparation experience, really, but the little fellow had been very adamant that the not try to disapparate anywhere else as Dumbledore had lifted the anti-apparition spell only partially and only in the Great Hall and if they tried to go out of it, it would be a very painful experience.

"Like hitting a cement wall!" warned the little wizard.

So far, two classes in, nobody had managed it yet.