James darling,
Just a short note to tell you that that’s a brilliant suggestion; we’d love it if Sirius would stay with us over Christmas; he sounded very unhappy about his family in the summer. Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of Walburga and Orion so I don’t blame him personally; we’ve met them a couple of times over the years and the way Walburga treated that sweet boy when she picked him up in summer was positively disgusting. Make sure you tell him he needn’t feel bad about staying with us – our house is open to him whenever he wants to spend time there. We’ll pick you up from the station next Friday; can’t wait to see you darling!
Here are some sweets to put you in the Christmas mood and keep you going; we’ll see you soon.
Lots of love,
Mum
“Well that’s settled then; all you need to do now is tell your parents you won’t be going home for the holidays,” said James to Sirius over his toast.
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Mum,
I’m just writing to let you know I’ve been invited to stay at James Potter’s again for Christmas so I’ll be going back with him straight after the end of term. Don’t worry about picking me up and taking me back to Hogwarts, they’re taking us back to platform nine and three-quarters at the end of the holidays.
Have fun with Regulus; if I’m not invited to stay with James in the summer holidays I’ll see you at the end of the year.
Sirius
“There. Short and to the point. She won’t be able to get angry with me over that; not like she ever would. She’ll probably be glad to have her hands clean of me,” he said bitterly as he attached the note to his owl and let it through the window.
“Poor Sirius; you’re so unloved,” said James as he stood up to leave. “Quidditch practice,” he said as he answered Sirius’ questioning glance. “If it makes any difference to you my mum seems to prefer you to me, so someone loves you,” he said wryly before climbing out of the portrait hole.
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“So we’ve got the dungeons,” said Lupin as they sat in the common room after the Christmas holidays poring over the piece of parchment spread out in front of them. “And we’ve marked the secret stairway going from here to there,” he said, marking it with his finger. “Do you think we have everything for here?” he said as he appealed to James.
“Looks like it to me, I can’t think of any other passages or anything that we’ve found. What about the ground floor?”
“We’ve done all the ground floor and mapped out every secret passage, staircase, everything but it’s going to be really hard to make them all connect up on the finished thing”
“The actual drawing is going to be hard too because of all the floors,” added Sirius. “We really need it to fit onto one piece of parchment; either that or we’ll need flaps and stuff which could get quite bulky, especially if it’s supposed to look like a spare piece of parchment because what if someone unfolds it?”
“What if we enchant it so that you can’t unfold it until you’ve said some sort of password?” suggested James. “That way if someone goes snooping round, all they’ll see is a piece of folded parchment and all the extras are inside.”
“Good plan James!” said Peter excitedly.
“We have the first floor too, don’t we?” asked Lupin.
“Yeah me and Peter did that, didn’t we,” said James. “I got every secret passage we’ve discovered and we checked all the other tapestries and things too but it took forever. Next we’ll do the second floor and third floor, and you and Sirius can do the fourth and fifth floors; sound good?”
“Yeah,” said Sirius with a grin. “Then that only leaves us with the sixth and seventh floors plus towers and they’ll be easy to do. I mean, I haven’t found anything in the towers, have you?”
“Not yet!” said James as he folded the parchment away and tucked it into his pocket.
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Cassie screamed as her plant’s leaves exploded, splattering her with purple goo.
“Well done Miss Jones, keep harvesting it!” called Professor Sprout from the other end of the greenhouse.
“Please Professor, can I go back to Gryffindor Tower and shower? Only it’s oozing all the way down my robes and I can already feel it in my shoes,” Cassie pleaded.
“It’s nearly the end of the lesson Miss Jones, just bear it out. Besides, you’ll be rather hard to poison after this!” said Professor Sprout cheerily.
“That’s exactly why I should be allowed to go! It’s only twenty more minutes. Ugh I hate these plants so much!” she complained to Lily. “I don’t even care that they produce antidotes; I just never want to see one again.”
“At least Herbology is the last lesson so as soon as we get back to the common room you can shower.”
“Yeah, I can shower in twenty minutes!” she cried. “Meanwhile I have goo dripping down my face!” Lily, Alice and Mary burst out laughing as they looked at Cassie’s face, the picture of disgust. “How am I ever going to get this out of my robes?” she moaned.
Twenty minutes later and thoroughly miserable Cassie returned to the castle, squelching with every step.
“Are you alright Jones?” asked a pleasant voice behind her which turned out to be Sirius Black.
“I feel disgusting,” she said pathetically
“Here. Scourgify,” he said, magically cleaning the goo off her robes. “I hope that makes you feel a little better, although you might still want to give them to the house elves to wash properly when you get upstairs!”
Cassie gave him a grateful smile as she said, “Thank you Sirius.”
“No problem; you looked pretty upset,” he said as he fell into step beside her, oblivious to –or ignoring – the hostile look Lily was shooting in his direction. “Always here to serve,” he said with a bow and making Cassie laugh.
“Thanks, I’ll remember that next time a plant decides to explode all over me!”
“Please do,” he said with a grin.
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“Getting in with the fairer sex are we Sirius?” they teased as they saw him walking over to them.
“What?”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what we’re talking about; we saw you with a certain chocolate-eyed beauty over there.”
“A certain Miss Jones,” said James with a nudge.
“I only cleaned her up and got the goo off,” he protested.
“You’ve never de-gooed anyone else,” pointed out Lupin.
“I don’t think anyone else has been in that position though.”
“I was last week,” said James, “and you didn’t help me. Am I not pretty enough for you?” he said, pulling a supposedly girlish face.
“No. Sorry to break it to you but I have standards. Besides, that was hilarious,” said Sirius with a chuckle. “I wouldn’t have missed your face then for the world!”
James laughed ruefully, “In hindsight I can appreciate the comedy value of it, which I’m sure Jones will come to do as well, but it was rather a shock at the time.”
“You made up for it by starting a goo fight though,” pointed out Lupin. “I think I can still smell it from where it lodged itself in my nose.”
“Such a tough life isn’t it?”
“Positively impossible,” he said with a sigh as they entered the castle.
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“Ok so let’s decide what the most important things we need to do are. One, we need to make it look like parchment when it’s not being used,” said James as they lay by the lake.
“Two, we need to make every person visible on the map.”
“Three, we need a way to teach future mischief makers how to open the passages.”
“Four… there isn’t a fourth is there?” asked Peter.
“Not as far as I can tell,” said Sirius. “But how are we going to work them out?”
“We could always ask someone from Zonko’s,” suggested Lupin.
“Do they make their products themselves though?”
“I don’t know but they’re bound to have had to submit a prototype or at least know what charms are used. If we can find some parchment similar to what we want-”
“We can use that as a starting point! Brilliant Moony!” grinned James.
“We just need to go to Hogsmeade then.”
“The next trip isn’t for ages…” said Peter.
“But the passage is always open.”
“I can’t do it James,” said Sirius, “I’ve got detention from Slughorn and McGonagall and Filch so I’m a little booked up.”
“That’s fine; I’ll go with Lupin and Peter.”
“Sorry James, I have to do some extra work for McGonagall and I’m supposed to see Madam Pomfrey tomorrow,” said Lupin.
“You are looking a little peaky. Peter?”
“I’m free!”
“Cool, we’ll go sometime this week then.”
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“How was it?” asked Lupin as he lay in the sun, looking paler than ever.
“They still didn’t have any! The third time!” said James frustrated.
“Bad luck. Maybe we can get it next year.”
“Next year,” moaned James. “It’s nearly the holidays already, what am I going to do all summer? I need Snivellus to cheer me up.”
“He’s over there,” said Sirius.
“Perfect,” he said as he stood up, walking over to Snape. Halfway there his path was blocked by a pretty red headed girl who came and stood in front of him and James automatically ran his hands through his hair, earning him a glare from her.
“Don’t even think about it Potter,” said Lily viciously.
“Think about what?”
“Bullying Sev. I know what you were about to do.”
“Actually, I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out with me.”
“Oh were you?”
“Yes,” he said as she stood, completely silent, in front of him. “Well?” he asked eventually.
“Well what? You haven’t asked me anything yet.”
“Will you go out with me?”
“No.”
“Will you go out with me next year?”
“No.”
“Hang out with me?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“Never.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Sure you’re sure?”
“GO AWAY POTTER!” she shouted at him, grabbing his arms, spinning him round and marching him back to where the other three lay.
“I can’t believe you still fancy her,” muttered Sirius as he watched her retreating back.
“She’s brilliant, she’s beautiful,” said James as he stared after her wistfully.
“You’re mental mate,” said Sirius as he watched Lily sit back down with her friends, Cassie Jones’ hair gleaming in the sun as she laughed, a deep brown waterfall rippling down her back which was shot through with gold and auburn. Not for the first time it struck him how pretty she was, and he wondered if she still liked him; she had certainly stopped talking to him but beyond that he had no idea what she thought.