James and Lily potter: Fourth Year

Chapter 20: fourth year

"Wood!" cried James, clutching his sore arms. "Give us a break! My arms are about to fall off and break."

"Ah, don't be a wimp, Potter," shouted Wood.

Sirius rolled his eyes and grabbed Cassia Newman's bat (she's the other Beater), and sent a Bludger flying over the Forbidden Forest.

Cassia grinned boyishly. "Nice one, Black."

"Oi! Black! You almost had my head there!" shouted Ben Volga, one of the other Chasers, who narrowly missed the flying black ball.

"S'ry, Ben," apologised Sirius, reddening. James snickered.

"Black, quit fooling around!" snapped Wood impatiently. "We want to give our fellow Gryffindors a good image here..." He looked over at where the Marauders and girls were sitting at.

Sirius looked over as well, and his eyes widened. "Wood! Why didn't you say so? I would've tried so much harder if we actually knew people were watching us! Hey, there's Remus and Peter, James. Hey guys!" He waved.

Lily snorted from the stands. "Looks like Sirius finally figured out we've been sitting here for fifteen minutes."

"He was always an unusual case," said Jennifer, nodding in agreement, hiding a smirk.

"Poor kid," added Remus.

"Newman and Black, get your head back on earth!" screamed Wood. "We have the final game in one week, and you two are fooling around."

"Sorry, Jay," said Cassia, grinning, as she waved at Lily, Arabella, Jennifer, and Violet. "We were just having some fun."

"Yeah, well..." Wood trailed off, shaking his head. "C'mon, Cass, don't make me be soft on you." He smiled fondly at her.

Sirius' jaw dropped. "You two are going out?" he demanded, hiding a grin.

"Er—sort of," said Wood grimly.

"We are," confirmed Cassia, kissing Wood in the front of the team.

Jason Wood was a very red Keeper the rest of the practice.

"I can't believe a girl can soften up Wood," said Arabella in awe, after practice was over.

"Yeah," said Sirius, still smirking at the news. "He was jealous when I took Cassia's bat."

"Wood is capable of jealousy?" said Lily, her eyes widening. "Besides Quidditch, I didn't know he cared about anything or anyone else."

"Oh, Wood's head-over-heels for Cassia," said James matter-of-factly. "It's been so obvious...he's asked her out last month."

"And you knew this all along and didn't tell me?" asked Sirius, pouting. "For all we knew, we could've sold the news to Rita Skeeter, the ditzy Hufflepuff second year."

"Well—er—" James blushed. "Once, when I was our equipment, I accidentally saw Wood and Cassia snogging behind his locker. Wood made me promise not to tell anyone."

"You can actually keep a promise?" asked Lily sceptically.

Remus snorted. "You know he only did it just so he wouldn't get kicked off the team."

"Hey, what happened to our Marauder oath?" exclaimed James indignantly.

"It went away," was the former's brief reply.

"Voldemort's getting stronger," whispered James in alarm, as he held up the Daily Prophet.

"He's what?" demanded Sirius, turning white. "That nutter?"

James handed him the article with shaking hands.

A New Era of Dark

By Ian Harpchord

The Ministry is very sorry to report the fact that a new era of a Dark wizard is about to begin. This man fashions himself the name Lord Voldemort, and he has already begun to get some followers into the Dark Side.

As you all may know, our own Albus Dumbledore had defeated the latest Dark wizard, Grindelwald, in 1945. This Voldemort, as he calls himself, has captured many people's opinions about Muggle-borns. He claims that they should be rid of in our Wizarding world and that the purebloods rule again.

"The bloke is crazy," commented one witch. "He's wanting to get rid of Muggle-borns, yet they're the ones who have been making our world a success for years after the defeat of Grindelwald. I say that this Voldemort is a fraud."

This probably explains why that there are so many Muggle deaths and disappearances for the last few weeks. A mad mob, calling themselves "Death Eaters", raided the Ministry of Magic headquarters and had announced that the Dark Lord will rise and will not fall.

Our Minister, Millicent Bagnold, is urging the magical community to remain calm. She claims that this is just another wizard who wishes to have his face on the paper and who won't, or can't, do anything drastic. But there are many doubts among everyone, because many of them believe that Voldemort has the right idea. He wants to get rid of Muggle-borns and anyone who dares to contradict him—but how will he do that?

"Well, the Ministry agrees that he's a rather—odd person, but harmless," said Lily hopefully, as they finished reading the article.

"Yeah, but the Ministry has been wrong about a lot of things before," said James darkly. "They said that Grindelwald was an old fraud too...and look how he turned out to be. I think we should all be worried, instead of remaining calm. You saw how he threatened me at the beginning of the school year and said that he'd do anything to get me on 'his side'."

"Maybe he's the one that kills us," said Lily, frowning.

No one said anything.

Everyone else in the Great Hall didn't seem to even notice the front-page article in the Prophet—except for the Slytherins, who were unnaturally giddy.