Soon after Lily stomped off, James heard someone yelling in his ear. “James! Jamesie! Oy! James!”
“Wha- what?” James looked over to Sirius, who had been whacking his shoulder to get his attention. “What was that for?”
“Remus and Peter want to have a… er… talk with us.”
Remus and Peter were glaring at Sirius and James, arms crossed. They did not look happy. “James. Sirius. What gives you the right to abandon Peter and me to go about chasing the ladies?” Remus looked thoroughly pissed.
“Yeah!” Peter squeaked out. “You know who we had to ride in a carriage with? Bertha Jorkins. We spent the entire ride listening to the gruesome details of who’s going out with who and how long she thinks they’ll stay together.”
James snorted. “Is that all? Sirius and I had to spend the entire ride with- get this- EVANS and her friends. It was awful.”
Remus’ face lit upin understanding. “So I guess that explains why your cheek is all red. It was Lily, wasn’t it.” His expression grew concerned. “You didn’t do anything to her, did you?”
Sirius smirked. “Well, Jamesie here had the overwhelming urge to forcibly remove Miss Evans from the doorway-“
“Hey, you told me to!”
“-and she got quite upset. Not exactly the way to win fair lady’s heart.”
James snorted again. “Fair lady! Her? Fair ladies don’t smack their knights in shining armor.”
Sirius batted his eyelashes. “But dear Jamesie! Lady Evans ‘twas not your damsel in distress. I was, remember? Now that my knight has saved me, does this mean that we ride of into the sunset and live happily ever after?”
“Sirius!” James roared. The aforementioned had already sprinted off to the castle, with his ‘knight’ in close pursuit. Remus and Peter looked at each other, then laughed and followed them into the Great Hall.
*
Professor McGonagall stood in front of the Great Hall, halfway through reading off the names of the first years. The new students looked positively terrified, after learning that they would have to sit on a wobbly stool in front of the entire school population while a talking hat was placed on their heads to read their minds. The pinched expression on McGonagall’s face didn’t help much (Peeves had let a charmed box of flying cow brains loose in the teacher’s corridors).
“Lockhart, Gilderoy.” A blond, naïve-looking boy nervously shuffled onto the dais. The expression on his face was slightly more stressed than that of Snape after he found that his robes had been charmed to fly up at random times to reveal his scraggly legs (and a little more) the year before, compliments of James and his friends.
“HUFFLEPUFF!” The Hat shouted, after a short time.
“DeLomy, Horace.” A surly looking boy with dark, unpleasant facial features lumbered up to the stool.
“SLYTHERIN!”
“Magoy, Charles.” The next newcomer looked slightly apprehensive as he sat down, as if struggling to maintain his aloof composure.
“GRYFFINDOR!” Cried the hat, after a long pause.
“Ormick, Lenna.”
“HUFFLEPUFF!” The heavyset girl smiled as she went to join her new housemates.
And finally, with ‘Yakipy, Pauline’ (Ravenclaw) the Sorting was over.
Dumbledore, seated in the centered Headmaster’s chair, stood and raised both hands. “Attention students! A few short words, please, before you indulge in the most pleasurable act of gorging oneself on the excellent dishes that have been prepared. First, it is my pleasure to welcome some new members to our staff. Our caretaker, known to most of us as Og, has been replaced by Mr. Argus Filch.”
Dumbledore gestured to the side door, where a shy looking man waved to the polite applause, a young cat seated at his feet. “We’re going to have fun breaking this one in,” James whispered to Remus.
“Also, please welcome our new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Miss Sarah Milles.” A young woman stood up from near the end of the staff table, laughing as some of the more raucous boys let out some catcalls (Sirius included).
“And finally, I would like to add that due to the increase in unpleasant events taking place in our world, it is likely that until the ringleader of these crimes is caught, Hogsmeade visits will either be greatly supervised or the age requirement will rise to fifth year. Now, please, enjoy!”
At his words, the long tables filled to the brim with tempting, amorous food. The feast itself passed by quickly, with Alex and Sirius’ shameless flirting, Alice and Frank’s bashful silence, and Lily and James’s frequent insults.
By the time that the feast was over, everyone’s stomachs were considerably fuller than before, and too tired to do anything but grunt, point, and ‘act like bloody trolls’ as Sirius put it so kindly.
Lily and Remus collected the new first years and led them up to the Gryffindor tower, and let them in the common room, where most collapsed onto their new beds.
And after that, all anyone could do was drag themselves up to their respective dorms, where they slept soundly until they were awaken in the morning by a blood-curling scream.