Mischievous-A Marauders Fanfic

28-Two Sharp Scares

"James" Sephy gasped, as they dragged themselves up the stairs at quarter to ten that evening. "I'm going to die-I can't. Move."

"Shall we sit on the stairs for a minute?" James panted, and the pair of them collapsed together on the third floor stairwell.

"Bloody hell. I can't breathe" Sephy groaned, flopping like a dead fish in the floor.

"I'm going to die" James agreed. "If Filch doesn't kill me first. Look at the floor..."

Both of them looked at where they had collapsed rather guiltily. Their training kits, both slathered in mud, had left two huge brown smears on the floor.

"Keep going?" James asked wearily.

"Come on" Sephy agreed, taking a deep, heavy breath, scrambling with utterly worn out limbs to her feet again, and pulled up James.

"We can make this" James agreed, seemingly trying to convince himself as well as encourage Sephy.

The pair of them managed another two floors before collapsing again.

"I can see the Carters" Sephy muttered to James. "Two floors below. Looky."

"We won't let them catch us" James said breathlessly. "We won't...We won't..."

The pair made it to the top of the stairs.

"The hell?" James exclaimed under his breath, as they reached the Fat Lady. For outside, scrunched up in a small, greasy ball of robes, was Severus Snape.

"Just don't. Not now" Sephy muttered tiredly. She staggered up to Snape.

"Could you let us past please?" she asked timidly, holding out both of her muddy hands in front of her so Snape could see she didn't have her wand out.

Snape eyeballed them furiously.

"Will you get Lily to come?" he demanded, with a bitter grimness.

"I will do my best" Sephy replied diplomatically. "Thank you."

"Thanks" James muttered, as Snape shuffled out of the way and, after whispering the password in the Fat Lady's painted ear, he and Sephy stumbled into the common room.

"Merlin's curly toenails, James, Seph! What's Nash done to you?" Jones asked from the armchair, laughing. "I saw Colton come in a minute ago looking the same" he continued.

"He tried..." James began, but couldn't finish for lack of breath.

"To kill us" Sephy finished for him. "Literally. We're dying. Where's Lily Evans...?"

Sephy looked around as James loosely high-fived her, splattering mud across the room, and plodded upstairs to shower.

"Problem, Sephy?" Lily asked coolly from a corner.

"Small one" Sephy sighed. "For you, not really me. Snape's sitting outside. He told me to get you to come out..."

Lily shook her head.

"I won't. Go shower, Sephy. Don't worry about it. It's not your business..."

"I'm here if you want" Sephy replied, before trudging up to the girls' showers, grabbing her towel and toiletries from her room and stripping off the second she got into the cubicle.

"Bloody hell" she groaned, as the hot water eventually came on, and instantly turned brown through the amount of mud she had caked on her body.

She heard some other people come in.

"Sadie, Florence, that you?" she called.

"Yeah" came the joint reply. "You alive?"

"Sort of" Sephy laughed, sitting on the floor in the shower as her legs just couldn't hold up anymore. "You two?"