101 Ways to ditch the Date | SIRIUS BLACK

No. 76

Sirius felt an odd sense of Déjà vuas him and all their friends congregated in the classroom at the end of the day. It was just the same as before with some small changes though: Dexter and Emmeline were present not to mention Marlene didn't look like she was about to storm out this time. It had been a while since he'd had a good plan and it was nice to have them all together despite the circumstances. 

"Okay, thank you for coming everyone," Sirius said, standing tall at the front of the classroom, "Just to fill everyone in, Ora is missing - "

"WE KNOW! YOU LITERALLY INVITED EVERYONE THAT WAS AT THE PARTY!"

"Dorcas!" Sirius glowered, "But good point ... alright, no recap is needed then, we can just get straight to it. We need to figure out two things. Firstly, where she is and secondly, how to get her to come back with us," Sirius said firmly, "Ora is stubborn and smart but I believe we can do it ... Dexter, why are you raising your hand?"

Dexter looked around with confusion at Sirius's remark, "Is that not how this works? I have something to say."

"It's more of an open discussion. We're not first years, we can shout out," Sirius replied, his words accompanied by a flippant gesture.

"Well, with all due respect, I'd rather raise my hand, thank you," Dexter replied, "I'm not sure where she'd go but I do have an idea of how we could get her to stay. I'd like to take a look at the contracts that Ora has written over the years. We had a slight browse over them a while back during one of our revisions sessions at the start of term when she was thinking of rewriting them and I noticed that she likes reciprocal clauses ... can you see where I'm going with this?"

Everyone remained blank face other than James who raised a single eyebrow of confusion, "My best bet would be on Sirius and Ora's contract. I presume, the majority of the clauses would have applied to both parties as I doubt Mr Black would have signed it otherwise - "

"You give him far too much credit," James sniggered, "He signed it because of all the kinky - "

"I signed it because of the reciprocal clauses!" Sirius cut in suddenly before engaging in a two second mischievous glower match with James, "You were saying?"

"There's bound to be a section or a clause on both parties being present for a certain situation, it seems like something she'd put in just to be safe - "

"There was!" Sirius said suddenly, pressing his head into his hands, "I can't remember exactly ... it was on page five ... something about if the other one needed a date then the other one had to go with them ... I can't really remember."

"No matter, I can browse through it. It will be an intriguing read no doubt, I assumed she was very thorough," Dexter smiled, "Ora's more likely to trust her own word rather than ours. That's how we make her stay. If that doesn't work, there are some laws on truancy that I'm sure will be rather convincing..." For a moment, his eyes gleamed and Sirius wasn't entirely sure he liked the sound of it. Still, Dexter would never hurt Ora so he decided to let the lawman do his thing.

"Alright, a few of you can help Dexter with that," Sirius said firmly, "I'm guessing the rest of us should try and figure out where she might be."

He eventually decided that him, Emmeline, Marlene, Lily and Peter could brainstorm together. Whilst she was close to Dexter also, one look at him and the contracts suggested he would be in his own world for the next few hours so they decided to leave him alone. Instead, they figured James would complete the set. He didn't know Ora even if he had faced the wrath of her tickling jinx once but he'd be good for moral support.

•••

"It had been a while since we'd last spoken and even then, we mostly just stayed at school and sat on walls and discussed well, you or James," Lily admitted.