The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Thirty Five

Dedicated to Alyss_Wolf for her astounding ability to re-read my stuff endlessly and your amazing support! Should have done it earlier but here's a good chapter for you!

Chapter Thirty Five

The feast was drawing to a close as Dumbledore stood up and quietened everyone down. He moved through the usual announcements quickly, well aware of the strange contradiction between the students being desperately tired and wanting to go to bed and their excitement at being back which fuelled the desire to stay up talking until the early hours of the morning. Childhood was a wondrous thing he mused as he faced their eager faces and smiled. “Now I have one last thing to say to all of you; I am sure that the Hogwarts rumour mill has been as efficient as ever and that this is news to very few of you but I am pleased to tell you that your Heads of School for this year will be James Potter and Lily Evans!” An enormous cheer billowed from the Gryffindor table, spreading its wings and filling the room as it spread to the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. Even a few of the nicer Slytherins could be seen applauding happily and everyone chuckled as Sirius forced James to his feet, practically carrying him as he lifted his arms above his head and waved his friend’s arms about in the air. Not one to suffer alone James motioned imperiously to Lily to stand up too and, after a vicious struggled between her and the other Gryffindor girls, she too was standing, her face nearly as red as her hair.

James was surprised at how easily he settled into the routine of being Head Boy; at first he had been mortified when Dumbledore had announced him and Lily as the Heads of School at the end of the feast but since then he had become used to his role; he found it less amusing, however, that Sirius felt the need to parade around in front of him and pretend to roll out a carpet, commanding people to salute as their ‘King’ walked past. It was even less amusing that this had caught on so much that the terrified first years, barely reaching past his knee, did it even when he had managed to escape from Sirius. He was greeted by a rash of salutes and cheers which were even worse than when he had only been the captain of the reigning Quidditch team; this also, irritatingly, included snide comments and sarcastic salutes from bitter Slytherins as well as the few people who felt that he shouldn’t have been awarded it because he wasn’t a Prefect. What he was not surprised at, however, was how well Lily fit the role; he had known that she would be amazing at it ever since he had first read her name in the letter and, had he known how amazed she herself was that she was not the worst Head Girl Hogwarts had ever had, he would have been dumbstruck.

The only thing which wasn’t going his way in the first term of his final year at Hogwarts was the patrols; unfortunately he had been distracted enough by Lily widening her eyes and begging him to help her that she had managed to get a strangled “Yes” out of him to pairing up with Azalea. His nights on duty were some of the worst things he had ever endured and he hated every minute of them. Remus, on the other hand, had somehow managed to get off extremely lightly – he had Mark Burrows every other week and Lily on the others. As James headed down one of the corridors, Azalea stamping moodily alongside him, he grumbled to himself. Why couldn’t he be given every other one with Lily? They were the Heads of School after all. Azalea marched through the darkened corridors, her wand out as she swept every corner for rule-breakers and James followed. She hadn’t even given him any trouble so he wasn’t sure why Lily was so worried and he didn’t see the need for him to ‘control’ her; then again he did accept that it could be she hadn’t yet misbehaved because he was her partner.

“Come on Potter,” she said coldly, her voice hissing through the darkness like a dagger between ribs, “wouldn’t want the Head Boy to be seen slacking, would we? You’re wasting my time here with this stupid patrol so we might as well get it over with as quickly as possible.” To be honest he preferred it when she didn’t talk and they just paced the hallways in silence. “Of course you’re not exactly the normal choice for Head Boy, I must say a lot of us were surprised that Dumbledore picked you… Well not so much that Dumbledore picked you because he’s an old fool who’s going nuts but that he was allowed to pick you by people who ought to have more sense.” James refused to rise to her bait and bit his tongue instead. If he didn’t say anything she’d probably shut up. After a few more minutes of slinging insults at a stony silence James was proved right and she fell into a mutinous quiet.