The Life that Never Lived ? (Chamber of Secrets)

MUDBLOODS AND MURMURS

Harry just shrugged and said, "How should I know? I don't even know how much time skips any more than you guys."

James hesitated for a moment, before swapping the baby that was still in his arms with the book so that Lily was now holding her little son. He began the next chapter in a rather foul mood, he was still ticked Lockhart had lied about the book's he'd made up, and Harry was going to go another full year without a proper teacher. DADA was an important class, and Harry was having worse luck than they did about awful teachers. Still, he was determined to shake it off and enjoy the rest of Harry's year.

"Good." All four of them said gleefully, Sirius adding on, "great time for you to practice the uses of the hidden corridors."

"Why's he following you around?" Lily asked in surprise.

Harry was grimacing in annoyance again, admitting, "he liked to try and talk to me. It was bloody irritating too, because he just kept trying to ask me questions about stuff like if I was going to go on and be a Dark Wizard Catcher, when I had no idea what that was? I hated being hero worshiped."

Lily felt bad for both the kids, seeing both sides of the coins there.

James looked dearly like he wanted to say something, but he thought Lily would get mad at him again, so he held it in.

"Points for originality," Sirius chuckled, "we never did that."

"Early Quidditch practice," James agreed sagely, "not unsurprising."

"Okay," James grimaced, "I've never had to get up that early."

"Vosper got us up before dawn once," Sirius reminded him, "it was before his last game there, and he was desperate to make sure we won that one."

James nodded in remembrance, their old Quidditch Captain had been a real fanatic, like Wood apparently.

"You sound way too enthusiastic about this," Lily said lightly, feeling like laughing at these boys. They wouldn't stay up past midnight to study for exams, but would get up as early as they had to for a game.

"Wow," Remus said in surprise, "he's dedicated. I never went down with those two, I enjoyed sleeping too much."

Harry just shrugged, he still found Colin more aggravating than anything.

All four gave appreciative chuckles at that, glad photo Harry was putting up as much of a fight as the real Harry.

"I thought you said you would have, if you were alone?" Lily asked, starting to feel bad for the little first year. He was just trying to talk to Harry after all.

"That was before Lockhart made such a fuss about it," Harry said, just as flatly to his Mum as he had been to Colin.

"Wow, you were really desperate to get rid of him," James said, mouth twitching with humour.

Harry rolled his eyes at all of them, they clearly found this funnier than he had.

"Bet your camera he was," Sirius agreed proudly.

Then Harry went wide eyed as he popped himself in the head and said, "oh, Colin told me and I remember now, went on about buying that camera in Diagon Alley before he came to school. That's how he got it."

"Well that explains it," James grinned, happy that random little thing had been answered, and also understanding there was no way Harry could remember that until after all of the conversations

with Colin came back to him.

"No, to the last one anyways," Harry said, looking grumpier the more James read, "a new model came out over the summer. What?" he demanded as the others just kept smiling at him.