The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

CXI: But He Wasn't

In the Wizarding World, there is a common question that everyone who was alive on 31 October 1981 can answer without hesitation: where were you when you found out the Dark Lord was defeated? But for some folks, the ones who knew them, the question was a little different.

Where were you when you found out about Lily and James Potter?

Oliver Kent would always remember even the tiniest detail about that moment.

It was a Sunday, a light rain falling, pattering against the windows of the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Oliver was sitting at the Gryffindor house table, bent over a bowl of brown sugar porridge with dates and pecans tossed in - a nice warm, thick meal that would stick to his ribs and be filling later, out on the pitch. His Captain's badge gleamed on his chest as he shoveled breakfast into his mouth, head down and reading a letter he'd received the day before. The letter was a diagram of the pitch, a revision of a play he had designed and sent to James Potter earlier on. James had made slight changes with red ink and sent it back with a note written to the tight in his messy scrawl:

This is really good!  Wish I could be there to see you play. JP.

Oliver's thumb was covering that bit, though, he was absorbed in the play itself, watching the drawing move and act out the changes James had made. He was wondering why he didn't think of those modifications himself - of course it made more sense to split the Chasers! Of course! He was grueling himself for having not seen it. The noise all around him - students chattering loudly - was distracting but not enough to draw his attention from the play.

If he had been paying attention, Oliver would remember hearing the kids around him wondering where most of the members of staff were. Several were missing, prominent members, too - Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape, and Albus Dumbledore among them - and the ones who were there were whispering urgently amongst themselves.

The other thing he might have noticed was that several members of the Slytherin house were absent.

The windows overhead burst open and a cold gust of wind burst through as the owls of Hogwarts soared into the room, filling the gray ceiling with the sound of the beating of their wings. They began depositing their deliveries all around the room, and people were still laughing, still talking loudly about the match, about the incredible feast the night before.

Halloween at Hogwarts had always been a brilliant celebration and Halloween 1981 had been an especially brilliant one - the D.W.O. had seen to that, being that it was to be their last Halloween at the castle and all, Wally had really done it up right... People were still whispering about the prank, breaking into fits of laughter as they glanced in the direction of the Gryffindor table. Greatest thing that had been done since the time the Marauders made the whole school fall in love with Dumbledore, some said. Others said it was the greatest thing since the Marauders turned the whole school blue. Well, said yet others, you'd only be saying those two things were best if you hadn't heard about the time they transfigured everyone in the entire school to look like one of the four of them at breakfast. What about the time with the popcorn, others asked? and Dexter had said, "Whoaaaa, remember how much popcorn they had in the common room? We were swimmin' in it! That really was better than what we did, yeah?"

"Of course it was," Wally had replied as the three of them fell asleep in their dormitory in the wee hours of the night, "But it was the bloody Marauders, we knew we'd never live up to them, but coming in second to all that stuff? That is a crowning achievement. Bet nobody else ever tops that!"

Now, this morning, people were still talking about it.

That is, until there was a shriek of shock and horror that echoed up from the Ravenclaw table.