High noon sunlight was pouring into yet another dorm they were thrown into.
There were four beds, all in the Gryffindor fourposter colors, but for some reason the place seemed weird, Peter decided as he rotated slowly on the spot, like each had cut up their own half into sections deliberately to contradict the others.
Regulus had landed in the best spot by far, the area was decked out in Puddlemere United logos, Quidditch schematics, broom models, and tactical bits of parchment floated about in midair so that the viewer could have a complete three-sixty view of whatever he'd been in the middle of doing, the charms still in place while he was gone. He gently plucked one closer to him, seeing a cut out picture of a Firebolt and its statistics pasted onto a mock up of the pitch with squiggly lines in all possible directions and more numbers beneath, he was almost jealous of the amount of detail in it all.
The one Peter had landed in was pristine, not a smelly sock in sight or out of place. N. E. W. T. practice exams were in disciplined piles, and notes over more notes with nary an ink blot out of place were stacked prodigiously on the foot of the bed. He grimaced as he got to his feet, bumping into the nightstand and knocking over a picture of the redheaded family, imagining Percy coming forward and berating him for messing with his things.
The other two were perfectly bland in comparison. One lad had a toad in a tank on his bedside, star charts and practice exams for an upcoming Divination Exam of all things on his bed. The last had an odd number of pillows creeping out from odd places in the bed, stuffed in between the mattress, stuck to the ceiling, and at least half a dozen still slowly multiplying from under the bed. A bad duplication charm that he should probably keep practicing, Peter deduced.
His friends began converging on Oliver Wood's side of the room for the book, for obvious reasons, Sirius opting to get Regulus involved and making it a race. Alice, Lily, and Frank went over to pillow boys side of the room, giggling amongst themselves about fixing it before the whole place was covered, but Frank's attempt being botched at once as he merely fused three together instead like a grotesque looking body.
Peter meant to turn away and start helping them to tear through the pile of the Quidditch nuts things, but stopped in surprise at Percy's open trunk, spotting the book on top of several library borrowed Transfiguration texts. He picked up the purple bind gingerly, flipping it uneasily in his hands and peaking at the last few pages. They were still blank, only the text of the next chapter visible, and even then only a few paragraphs at a time until he read it all aloud. He sighed with distaste, wishing the outcome of Sirius' fate wasn't being hung over their heads so mysteriously, but at least smiled with enthusiasm as he loudly bragged the chapter title.
"No fair!" Sirius said at once, crouching on the spot as if preparing to tackle him to the ground and wrestle the book from him.
"Finder's keepers!" Peter teased, dancing in place to make himself harder to catch as Sirius began stalking forward unsubtly.
"That joke would have been a lot funnier if you'd actually made Keeper this year," Remus said mildly, as James tried to circle around behind for a sneak attack.
Peter didn't have time to respond, he squealed in surprise at Prongs grabbing him, throwing the book in the air and only just slipping away before he could get a good grasp, then doing a graceful spin and still catching the book with his back now pressed to the wall instead. "Back, back all of you heathens!" He laughed, brandishing his wand now. "I'll stun you two, don't make me! You're going to listen to me read about the best Quidditch Final ever and like it!"
"You are a cruel, evil soul, and a traitor to us all," James pouted as he flopped across Percy's bed, likely putting more creases in it from his one romp than had been done in seven years. Sirius flopped on the floor like he'd been struck dead.
YOU ARE READING
All in the Family
Fanfiction"The title The Boy Who Lived dominated the chapter, but this meant nothing to anyone, so their eyes skipped down to just below that, which was under the date 1981. Six years from now." A reading the book style fic, except much more loosely based aro...
