Holidays and Tactlessness
November brought with it heavy snowfall. One morning in the middle of the month, the students of Hogwarts awoke to find the green grounds had vanished completely and were replaced with a clean, white blanket, making it appear as if there had never been grass at all. The fact that it was near impossible to walk across the grounds kept the students from having to go to Herbology, as Professor Grines was not mad enough to force them to take the freezing walk. Professor Kettleburn, as per usual, did not care if the grounds were infested with thousands of feisty gnomes. He insisted on continuing with class. Normally, the fifth years would protest, loudly, but they had reached an acceptance. They knew that, come June, they could drop this class forever and only had to endure the madness for a little while longer.
November also brought with it the first Quidditch match of the season and, as usual, tensions were high between the two rivaling teams – Gryffindor and Slytherin. The Slytherins tried, as was their custom, to throw off the best players on the opposing team by hexing them with their backs turned the other way. This tactic was expected and, for the week leading up to the game, the Gryffindor team members were not seen outside of a large group. Of course, the Gryffindors had their fair amount of shots at the Slytherin team. Just three days before the match, James managed to incapacitate the Slytherin Seeker, Regulus Black, in the Hospital Wing because he had mysteriously started growing sprouts from his ears. Unfortunately, Madam Pomfrey fixed him up in a matter of minutes.
The match went on in the usual Gryffindor verse Slytherin fashion – jeering, booing, and crude remarks. The Beaters, as was their tradition, hit the Bludgers with unnecessary force at the members of the opposing team, hoping to dislocate some vital bones – arms, legs, and heads. The crowd was divided unevenly in red and green – three quarters of the stands was a river of red rosettes, while the last quarter was a forest of green. In the end, Gryffindor’s Seeker, Robbie Brown, managed to snatch the Snitch right out from under Regulus Black’s nose, earning Gryffindor one hundred and fifty points. The game ended in a lopsided two hundred to seventy point victory.
The workload the fifth years were confronted with had grown to an alarming rate. The older students reveled in telling the fifth years tales of the numerous meltdowns, nervous breakdowns, and floods of tears that ensued when they were in that position. Initially no one took the stories seriously, until Emily Fort, a Ravenclaw fifth year, shouted during Charms that there was no way she was going to get a decent career because her head was so thick it shouldn’t be considered a head at all. The sixth and seventh years were rather impressed when they found this out. There had not been a situation like that until April for them.
James and Sirius had come up with a way to relieve the stress. They called it Slytherin Hunting. Whenever the workload became too much to handle, they disappeared for an hour or so and, when they came back, there would be a Slytherin with a new body part growing out of them lying in the Hospital Wing. This behaviour infuriated both of the Gryffindor Prefects, but in different ways. Lily was disgusted because, the majority of the time, the targeted Slytherins had done nothing to deserve a hexing. Remus was annoyed because, as a Prefect, he was expected to deal out punishments to troublemakers and he never found it in himself to do it. Lily was the one who handled this area and, because of this, James and Sirius found themselves in detention for three weeks straight.
“You know, Remus,” Sirius began irritably one night when he and James miraculously were not detained.
“No, I don’t know, Sirius,” Remus said through gritted teeth, knowing what was coming next. He kept his eyes facing downward at his Astronomy homework, his quill clenched so tightly in his hand that it was about to snap in two.
“You’re a Prefect; you must have some input on the whole detention thing.”
“I do… and I think Lily was right to do what she did.” He scribbled in the star system he suspected the coordinates he was looking at belonged to.
“You do?”
“Bullstrode wasn’t doing anything when you gave him those bushes for ears.”
“He was breathing,” James said under his breath.
Remus’s eyes darted swiftly to the messy-haired boy. “Would you like it if I gave you a horn for a nose because you were breathing?” he asked nastily. When he received no response, he gathered up his homework and moved toward the staircase leading to the boys’ dormitory. “Don’t take advantage of the fact that I’m a Prefect.” And he disappeared up the stairs.
Sirius turned with raised eyebrows to James and Peter. “What’s his problem?”
James and Peter shrugged. “No idea.”
Even with Remus’s warning, James and Sirius did not cease their stress relieving practises. Of course, they made sure word of this never reached Remus’s ears. The only times he ever found out were when Lily happened to be the Prefect handling their detentions. She would make sure Remus heard, if only to point out that he should control his friends better. After the seventeenth time Lily chose to tell him this, he decided the best method was to just ignore his friends’ antics. Perhaps they would realise they were being childish and give up. He could dream, anyway.
“Hmm,” James muttered one morning, frowning at his copy of the Daily Prophet.
“What?” Sirius asked, looking over his friend’s shoulder at the headline on the front page.
James spread the newspaper out on the table so Remus and Peter could also see. The major story on the front page was about the mysterious disappearance of a Ministry of Magic worker named Evan Podmore. He had gone out for a drink at the Leaky Cauldron the night before and, according to his wife, never returned home. Ministry workers searched through the night for him, through every part of the Ministry they could reach, yet came up with nothing. Not even the slightest trace of his presence or any sign of a struggle.
“Odd,” Sirius commented, turning his attention back to his breakfast.
“It’s not odd when you think about it,” Remus mused, spooning his cereal around in his dish.
James folded up his paper. “What d’you mean?”
“Every year we’ve been here, something like this has happened.”
Peter looked thoughtful for a moment. “He’s right, you know.”
“Elaborate, please,” Sirius requested before shoveling some fried tomatoes into his mouth.
Remus ticked the occurrences off on his fingers. “First year – Professor Flitwick’s sister is killed. Second year – Alice’s dad is also killed. Third year – a bunch of Muggles die together. Last year – an attack in Hogsmeade. They may not all seem connected, but there’s something linking them together. There has to be.”
James frowned again, staring into the dregs of his breakfast. “Well, what could connect them? You don’t think the same person’s doing all of this, do you?”
“Maybe it’s a group of people,” Sirius abruptly suggested. His friends turned to stare at him. “Remember those people we saw in the Forbidden Forest, the ones with Lucius Malfoy? Who’s to say they’re not behind it all?”
“But who are they answering to?”
“They never gave a name. They just kept talking about him, calling him He, like he was a god or something.”
The boys gathered up their books and readied to go to Potions. As they trailed into the Entrance Hall in the direction of the dungeons, Remus brought up something he thought might be connected to the mystery they had read. “Remember that day on the platform, the one where my dad hexed yours, Sirius?”
Sirius nodded with a grimace plastering on his face. He could not help but remember that day with embarrassment.
“He mentioned something about a person named Voldemort.”
“Yeah, he did. So?”
“He said… I think… that people like us would pay when Voldemort had his way. He said we’d be the first to die.”
Sirius stopped dead in his tracks, leaving Peter to walk straight into him. He rounded on Remus, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “What are you saying?”
Remus appeared unabashed by the way his friend was looking at him. He went on calmly. “I’m saying that maybe this Voldemort has something to do with it all.” He glared back into Sirius’s eyes, knowing exactly what was going through the boy’s mind. “I’m not saying your parents have something to do with it, I’m saying-”
“Save it, Remus,” Sirius broke in dismissively. “I know they’re involved in whatever’s going on. Or if they’re not directly involved, they like it, anyway.”
“You don’t know that.”
Sirius laughed harshly, rolling his eyes. “You’ve met my family, and they don’t exactly like you, so why are you defending them?”
The boys continued on their way and descended down the stone steps into the chilly dungeon. “I’m not defending them,” Remus insisted as they reached the bottom step. The four boys lapsed into silence and entered the Potions classroom to see Professor Slughorn standing at the head of the room, looking as round and jolly as ever. Clearly he had not read the paper that morning. Then again, it would take personal misfortune to truly wipe the smile from Horace Slughorn’s face.
Sirius groaned from behind James. “Hide me from him, James.”
James shook his head and took his seat in the back of the classroom. “Why? He doesn’t hate you.”
Sirius nodded fairly; Slughorn’s feelings toward him were far from hate. But Sirius would prefer the professor to despise him. Slughorn had made it one of his life ambitions to have a collection of whom he considered to be the prized students of Hogwarts. Everyone knew that it upset the man greatly that both of the Black children were not in his house. He tried constantly to get Sirius to come to his parties, but Sirius had, for the most part, avoided them. “Yes, but that’s not the problem.”
“Quit your whining, Sirius.”
Fortunately for Sirius, Slughorn paid him absolutely no mind during the entire lesson except to commend him on his excellent Draught of Peace. According to Professor Slughorn, the Draught of Peace would be a potion they would be tested on during their OWL examinations. Naturally one of the hardest potions to concoct would be the one they were tested on. The OWLs couldn’t come soon enough. The sooner the tests came, the sooner they would be done with.
“Sweet Merlin, it’s freezing out!”
“Why didn’t you bring your cloak?”
“Because James decided to rip it clean it two!”
“How did you manage that, James?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!”
Sirius made a noise in his throat that sounded oddly like a venomous hiss. Earlier that morning, James had been trying out a spell and said the pronunciation incorrectly, resulting in Sirius’s cloak, which had been hanging innocently off his bedpost, to be torn into two neat halves. Remus and Peter, who had already gone down to breakfast, did not hear about this unfortunate incident until James and Sirius joined them on the grounds later. Unwisely, Sirius did not think to borrow a cloak from any of his fellow Gryffindors who would have gladly lent him one. So now he was left to shiver violently in the freezing late December snow and bitterly chilly air.
“Why didn’t you mend it?” Peter asked, balling some snow up in his gloved hands.
Sirius snarled angrily at James before answering Peter’s question. “Have you ever tried to mend a cloak that’s as badly damaged as mine?”
Remus, who was reading up on Defensive spells for Professor Kern, marked his place. “I’m sure you could mend it. James only ripped it into two pieces. He didn’t shred it, did he?”
“He might as well have.”
“Just look a spell up!” James insisted exasperatedly. He hadn’t meant to ruin Sirius’s cloak, it was an accident. He was allowed to make a mistake once or twice in his life, wasn’t he? Sirius made the same angry noise in his throat. “Would it make you feel better if I got you a new cloak for Christmas?”
Sirius smirked. “An expensive one.” Sirius wrapped his arms tighter around his torso as the temperature dropped another few degrees.
The Christmas holiday break had begun the day before and the castle was all but empty. Almost all of the Gryffindors had gone, with the exception of Alice and Lily, both of whom did not want to go home for the holidays. Lily could not stand to be with her older sister, Petunia, during a time that was supposed to be merry and Alice’s mother had a new boyfriend whom Alice did not like and did not want to be around on Christmas. Some of the younger Gryffindors had elected to stay at the castle, wanting to see what it was like during Christmas time. The boys couldn’t blame them; the castle was beautiful during this time of year.
Christmas Day dawned with another fresh sheet of snow blanketing the grounds. James and Sirius had the fifth year boys’ dormitory up at seven in the morning. They accomplished this by taking a present off the edge of Remus’s and Peter’s beds and dropping them on the slumbering boys’ faces. This broke Remus out of his sleep in an instant and he promptly told his friends where they should go. Peter, on the other hand, was not rattled out of his sleep. Remus and James watched as Sirius crossed the room and promptly sat down on his sleeping friend. Still, Peter remained unmoving and snoring.
“You’re not heavy enough to wake up anyone,” Remus pointed out, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Then get over here, you two!”
James laughed to himself and lightly sat down beside Sirius on Peter’s back. Peter mumbled some nonsense in his sleep, but continued sleeping. James looked over his shoulder at Remus, who was lying with his head on his pillow again, watching the spectacle with an exasperated look on his face. It was too early in the morning for this.
“C’mon, Remus! Help us!” James insisted, patting the small, empty space left on Peter’s back.
“No,” Remus said simply before breaking into a shuddering yawn.
“Don’t you want to be part of the fun?” Sirius jibed cheerfully.
“Because sitting on my friend is so much fun.” He pulled his blanket up to his neck. “Good night.” And he shut his eyes in a last ditch attempt to get back the sleep he had lost. He vaguely heard James and Sirius conferring with each other in hushed voices and instantly felt dread filling his stomach. If they were talking that quietly, obviously they were conferring against him. That meant only one thing – he was not going to be lying in his bed much longer. Just as he heard their footsteps approaching him, he rolled himself out of bed, landing in a crouch on the cold, wooden floor. He grabbed his wand off his nightstand and pointed it between his two best friends.
“One more step and you’ll be breathing through a tube,” he threatened, moving his wand from James to Sirius and back to James.
“You would really hex us this early in the morning?” Sirius questioned doubtfully.
“You would really wake me up this early in the morning?” Remus shot back. His friends knew better than to wake him up this early when the full moon was only a week ago. He had still not gotten his energy back.
James and Sirius glanced at each other knowingly. They smartly stepped back, their hands up in surrender. “Sorry, mate,” Sirius apologised.
Remus steadily got to his feet, replacing his wand back on the table. He nodded towards Peter, who had remarkably not been disturbed by the noise his roommates were making. “Maybe you’d like to let Peter sleep?”
“What other choice do we have?” James admitted resignedly.
The three boys that were awake took their pile of presents off their edges of their beds and began pulling the wrapping paper off of them.
“Wicked, my parents got me a broomstick servicing kit!” James exclaimed when he opened the gift from his parents. Remus and Sirius looked over to see a black leather box in James’s lap. The words Finest Broomstick Servicing Kit were written in elegant, golden, curvy letters across the front. He pulled up the clasps at once, pulled up the lid and began sifting through the contents.
“What’s that, Sirius?” Remus asked, gesturing towards the sheet of parchment in his hand. Sirius was sitting on his bed, next to the new cloak James had given him, with his head bent as he read.
“A letter from my great uncle,” Sirius replied, turning the sheet over so Remus could see the writing.
“You have family that actually writes to you?” James said, unquestionably surprised.
Sirius scowled and nodded. “Alphard actually has some brains.” He turned to the letter so it was facing him and his eyes moved slowly down the page, taking in the words. As he did so, a frown line appeared between his eyes. But when his friends asked what was wrong, he shook his head and tucked the letter out of sight. Instead, he nodded to Remus, who was holding a package in his lap. “What’s that?”
“My mum put together a photo album for me,” Remus responded, holding the package that Sirius now saw was a book up. “Some pictures I took, some she and my dad took.” He flipped through the pages, stopping on some to get a better look at the pictures.
“Nice,” Sirius commented, nodding.
Peter woke up eventually, yet seemed to have no recollection of anyone sitting on him. His friends decided this might be for the best; an angry Peter was not fun to deal with on Christmas Day. When he finally did elect to wake up, he traipsed down to the Great Hall with his friends for the much anticipated Christmas Feast. The house tables had vanished and were replaced with a single long table trailing the length of the Great Hall. The professors were already seated, chatting in a raised buzz with each other. The first years who had chosen to stay were seated at the far end of the table, appearing apprehensive at the prospect of being alone with their professors during a holiday.
The boys spotted Lily and Alice seated midway along the table, speaking quietly with each other as they ate.
“Happy Christmas, you two,” Sirius greeted, taking the empty space on the bench beside Alice.
“To you guys as well,” Alice returned as she selected a roast potato from the golden platter set in front of her.
“Did you guys really sit on me while I was sleeping?” Peter asked for the seventh time that day.
“Yes, not that it made much of a difference,” James replied, bitter that their scheme had not worked. “Perhaps if Remus had joined us, you would have woken up with the rest of us.”
Peter grinned in thanks at Remus, who nodded once and returned his attention to the sausages in his dish.
“Haven’t you two ever heard of an alarm clock?” Lily asked them.
“Yes, we have, actually,” James responded brightly. “That’s how we usually wake them up. Just chuck the thing at their heads; it works brilliantly!”
They heard Lily mutter something under her breath that sounded distinctly like “boys”, but they paid no mind to her. Instead, they diverted their attention to the crackers dispersed across the tabletop. Wizard crackers were far more elaborate than Muggle ones. Wizard crackers exploded in rounds of blue and pink smoke and had the most spectacular gifts inside them. Muggle ones only made a short bang and had silly plastic toys inside. James pulled one with Sirius and it engulfed them in a haze of blue and pink smoke and sparkles. When they were visible once more, James was holding a puffy brown hat with a stuffed vulture on the top and Sirius was clutching a scarlet wizard hat. James put his hat on and picked up his spoon.
“Lovely, don’t you think?” he simpered in a voice that was a few octaves too high for a boy.
“Oh yes, you’ll have all the girls, looking like that,” Sirius cracked. He reached forward to spear a bit of roast chicken onto his fork and gave a yelp of surprise when a pearly, translucent head appeared out of the platter. “Nick, you have got to stop doing that!”
The Gryffindor ghost, Nearly Headless Nick, pulled himself through the table until he was floating above the Gryffindor fifth years. “My apologies, I didn’t realise you would be there.” He turned to the room at large and wished them a Happy Christmas. “Are you six enjoying your day?”
The Gryffindors nodded. “When my roommates aren’t trying to make me up against my will,” Peter added under his breath. Nearly Headless Nick smiled happily at the group and drifted along the room to chat with the professors.
“One day he’s going to appear through my face,” Sirius lamented, taking a large bite out of his chicken.
“It would make a nice change from how you usually look,” James joked, mashing his potatoes with his fork.
“Stuff it, Potter.”
“Snape went home?” Peter asked Lily as James and Sirius continued yelling at each other.
Lily nodded. “He didn’t want to, but his mum wanted to see him.”
“Can’t imagine why anyone would want to see that,” Sirius remarked harshly, stabbing his dinner.
Lily shot Sirius a severe look. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She set her fork down with a clatter and stepped out into the aisle behind the table. “I’m finished.” She gave her friend a pointed look.
Alice looked longingly at the platters, which had just been filled with the most delicious looking puddings. Suppressing a groan, she joined Lily and walked out of the dining hall. Shrugging, Sirius began piling Treacle Tart onto his plate.
“And the prize for the Most Tactless Boy goes to Sirius Black,” Remus said loudly.
Sirius choked on his pudding. “What? Me? Tactless?”
“Snape is Lily’s friend and I don’t think she appreciates you saying things like that about him.”
Sirius scoffed. “Like you disagreed with what I said.”
“I don’t like Snape, but I know better than to make fun of him in front of his friend.” He took a large bite his chocolate éclair. “Can’t you just give your vendetta a rest when she’s around?”
“Why? That’s not any fun.”
Remus rolled his eyes. The reasoning behind his request was that he was bound to get an earful of it during his next patrol with Lily. The last thing he wanted to hear was her ask him why his friends were the most insensitive slugs she had ever met. His answer – because they’re idiots – was no longer working.