The Marauders: Year Seven Part One

Careful How You're Handling Those

The next first week at Hogwarts seemed to fly by even faster than James Potter on the quidditch pitch. It was a mishmosh of getting resettled in the dormitories and new routines, people commenting on James and Lily's relationship (always with "I knew all along" or else "it's about ruddy time!"), and classes in hot, stuffy classrooms. McGonagall had to take away Sirius Black's wand in their first Transfiguration class when he'd been using it to sword fight with James.

"Well how come you're not confiscating his wand, too, Minnie?" Sirius had protested.

"Because, Mr. Black, Mr. Potter is trying to do his assignment, and you are twarting him," McGonagall replied.

"Well how am I supposed to do my assignment without my wand?"

McGonagall said, "Next time, think about that before you've interrupted another boy's concentration!" But she gave Sirius's wand back - having only ever intended to disarm him long enough to stop the two boys from poking each other without getting caught in the cross-fire herself. 

James was smirking through the entire thing, carefully keeping his head ducked down in his book, because it had actually been him who had started the entire thing to begin with.

In their second Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Severus Snape got highest marks from Garm, who had set the class up out of doors on the grounds, exploding a shed that Hagrid kept old tools in. Each student took a go at it and the more completely obliterated the shed was, the higher the marks they go were. Garm repeatedly used the repairing spell to put the shed back together, and one-by-one they took gos at destroying it again. Most of the students used bombarda or bombarda maxima to knock the shed down, but Snape took another course.

"Deprimo!" Severus shouted when it was his turn, jabbing his wand forward with his forearm perfectly straight. There was a moment in which it seemed that nothing had happened and Sirius was about to make fun of Snape's lame attempt when the shed began to smoke from every crevice and to shake... Garm's face lit up with pleasure and amusement as he watched it... and then, with  bomb-like implosion, the shack exploded so completely that Garm actually struggled repairing it.

"Very good, Snape," Garm said - a rare moment of praise that even Frek looked shocked to hear, hovering a few steps behind Garm with wide eyes as Severus Snape smiled proud of himself. He tried to meet Lily's eyes, but she'd expected him to seek her reaction and she turned away.

It was very good magic, though, and even Sirius had to force himself not to be impressed, and he turned quickly to Remus to distract himself. Sirius whispered, so that only Remus could hear, "You can do better than that. Listen here, all you have to do is walk up and huff and puff and blow the shed down." He snickered.

James, who immediately followed Severus at the exploding of the shed, rolled up his sleeves with determination as he stepped up, Severus still basking in the praises of Garm, who hadn't expected such a thorough job of it from any of the students. James glanced at Lily, who stood off to the side, having used the bombarda during her turn up, and he scoured his memory for something that might work and he finally came up with - "Deletrus!" 

The entire shed seemed to shiver and then turned to ash so fine that it utterly and completely disappeared.

Garm blinked in surprise at the place where the shed used to be, and he walked over and kicked in the grass with the toe of his boot before looking up, his eyes meeting James's. "Impressive, Potter," he murmured, then waving a hand carelessly, he said, "The rest of you don't get to practice the spell, I guess, seeing as Potter's destroyed the thing beyond repairing... Good luck telling Hagrid what you've done to his tools, boy." And with that, Garm turned and started back up the grounds.