*****
James walked down the hall agitated. It wasn't the fact that the team had laughed at him that made him upset; he had expected that. It was what the captain had said to him when he was done trying out. The voice ran in his head as if someone had hexed his worst moment to reiterate.
"Wow, you're really good, but we can't put you on the team. It would make us look bad. You understand, right?" James stared at the captain in utter astonishment. Why was he telling this to him? He went to turn away and leave for the library when the captain called out once more. "Hey, James," James turned around. "Next year�you try out you'll be guaranteed a spot.�
He furrowed his brow as he tried to stop thinking about it. It wasn't fair! He hated being eleven. He was too young to do everything everyone else got to do but he was also too old to do the things he used to at home with Sirius. He sighed and looked down at his watch. He had to get to the library for yet another meeting they had planned. They had been having these meetings for the last few weeks trying to see how long it would take them to get the prank done and over with. But at the rate they were going it wouldn't happen until late November.
They had found the spell they needed and it was simple enough, Peter was the only one having problems with it. All they needed now was the password for the Slytherin common room. This had seemed simple enough, until the beginning of this week when Remus had begun to acquire chronic headaches, which caused him to sit out during their information treks. But the strangeness of Lupin became extremely apparent the day before when, during History class, he had a little seizure, getting even Professor Binn's attention, which in itself is quite a feat especially if even the mans death hadn�t fazed him in the slightest.
It was strange for James to see one of his best mates bodies tense up for a short period of time and then start to shake violently. However, the strangest part was when they went to help him and he told them to back away saying that he didn't want to hurt them. Tears were rolling down Remus� face as he had uttered those words looking up at his friends with nothing short of fear showing plainly in his gray eyes. Obviously, or at least that was what it seemed like at the time, James had been the only one concerned with this because Sirius and Peter had gone to the common room without even thinking twice about Lupin having to spend the night in the hospital wing. Yet, when they were in their dorm, away from everyone and their comments that followed the incident, Sirius had mentioned something interesting; when people have seizures they have no clue what is going on, and Lupin talked to them, Remus knew exactly what was happening to him. James had a very sleepless night over that and had a very hard time in Potions the next morning because of it. It didn't help any that Professor Lamia was in a very sour mood for one reason or another and was taking points off of both Houses left and right. She gave Sirius a detention that would be served later on that evening for talking back when she took off ten points from Gryffindor when he answered a question correctly, but hadn�t worded it exactly as their textbook had.
James looked up from his thoughts, amazed to find himself in the library with no clues as of how he had managed to get there so fast. He saw his friends at the last table, well out of earshot of the other students, and the nosey librarian Madam Pince, who had already yelled at the four many times previously for appearing to be up to no good.
"Nice of you to join us." Sirius said without looking up from the book that had the certain memory charm in it that Madam Pince had confiscated from them twice before, but as the words rolled off his tongue he instantly regretted it. "How'd you do?" He hit himself mentally as soon as the words had left his mouth.
"I didn't make the team, if that's what you mean." James looked at his friend, reading the disappointment Sirius felt towards him that was written clearly in his eyes. "It's okay." Sirius' eyebrow cocked upwards. "Honestly!" James took a good look at his two friends and realized something. "Where's Remus?"
"Lupey?" Sirius asked dumbly as James glared at him. It wasn't right to call Remus a name that he hated just because he wasn't there. Sirius felt the glare and went on with his voice sounding a bit goaded. "Oh, he said something about having to visit his sick sister or something."
James nodded and took a seat directly across from Sirius. They sat in silence for a while as Sirius reread the directions on how to do the charm aloud to Peter giving James time to slip into his own thoughts once again. Lupin had said something about visiting his sister but was it truly a good idea for Remus to be visiting a sick sister when he, himself was ill. Sirius stared at James and waved his hand in front of his face to get his attention once more.
"Come back to earth James."
James blinked and stared at Sirius processing his words. Once they had clicked James sighed. "So did we get any new information?"
Peter nodded enthusiastically obviously very proud of some deed he and Sirius must have accomplished while James had been busy being humiliated by the Gryffindor Quidditch captain. "The common room. It's really far down in the dungeons-"
"It�s located way under the school. We took your cloak so we could follow a Slytherin down there while you were busy trying out for the team." James nodded as Sirius had confirmed his beliefs.
"So you got the password?" James said finally feeling that his day was looking up.
Peter and Sirius exchanged glances. "Well, no." They said together.
James couldn't hide his disappointment. Sirius took over the meeting once James face had fallen into a look of complete displeasure. "James, don't. We actually almost got in but we couldn't understand what that Douglas Spinat was saying. So Peter and I have been thinking an-"
"That could be dangerous."
"I don't appreciate your sarcasm." Sirius said critically. James just gave him a defiant stare. "Anyway, as I was saying Peter and I were thinking and came up with two plans. One, we can go back down there and wait for them to actually say the password intelligibly-"
"Which will probably never happen." Peter chimed in.
"Or we could gang up on one of them and scare them into telling us the password. I'm quite partial to that idea."
"Fine, when Remus comes back we'll do it." James said earnestly, torn between the fact that Sirius was right about the subject of the password and just wanting the meeting to end.
"Okay." Sirius said and then pulled out James' invisibility cloak from Peter's backpack and handed it to him. "I have to go." Sirius said in a sulking manner.
James watched him leave and turned to Peter who kindly pointed out the obvious. "He's mad at you."
"I know." James sighed. "He's been really touchy lately." James looked down at his cloak and took it in his hands and turned to Peter. "You don't mind?" He asked.
Peter just looked at him. "Go."
James smiled at him and got up and walked down the hall. He threw his cloak over him once he had reached an abandoned hallway just outside of the Defense Against the Dark Arts room and walked down to where Sirius was supposed to meet Professor Lamia; the dungeons. When he reached the classroom he lingered just outside of the room, waiting for them to leave for the designated detention room for the night. Sirius was lead out of the Potions classroom and down the hall, up the stairs, and out of the school to a large hut just outside of the forbidden forest. He followed as silently as he could. Once Professor Lamia knocked on the door the giant man they had seen during their first night at Hogwarts, opened the door and greeted them with a warm smile.
"This is Sirius Black, Hagrid. The student that will be helping you this afternoon."
"'ullo, Sirius." He greeted pleasantly.
Professor Lamia frowned at the giant, and spoke to him as coldly as she could. "Don't be friendly with him. He is in detention, remember."
"Righ�." Hagrid agreed and looked down at Sirius. "So yur were talkin' back in class." Sirius nodded. "Well, you'll jus be helpin' me in me garden." Hagrid then led Sirius to the opposite side of his house where a large garden laid. James followed them shortly after getting out of Professor Lamia's trek back up to castle in her usual hurried huff.
James watched as Hagrid explained to Sirius exactly how he was to weed the garden and how to use the bug killer. When Hagrid was sure Sirius had gotten it he left the garden patch and walked over towards the Quidditch field. James took this as a chance to talk with his friend. He hopped the large fence that surrounded the garden and stood behind Sirius and poked him in the back. Sirius jumped and turned around staring right where James was standing.
"What do you want?" He asked with a tone of indignant hurt sounding clearly in his voice. James took off the cloak and sat on the fence choosing to ignore Sirius� attitude.
"I wanted to ask you what's wrong. You've been kind of detached lately." Sirius made a mocking chuckling sound but said nothing. "Oh, come on Sirius, don't be like that." Sirius just pulled out a very large weed and tried to ignore James.
James sighed and hopped back over the fence and started to walk up to the castle, defeated. Sirius tried to keep his mind on his detention work but couldn't. He threw down the weed he held firmly in his hand and stood up turning towards James� retreat back to the castle. "James wait!" James stopped in his place and turned towards Sirius as the setting sun glared in his eyes. "You want to know what's wrong?" James nodded. "You don't do anything with just me anymore. It's always let's wait for Peter to get it or let's wait until Remus is well. It's not fair! You're my best mate and I'm being pushed to the sidelines as you usher in new people to take my place!"
James felt his mouth drop. This was absurd. How could Sirius even feel that way? "Sirius, don't be daft! I'm not pushing you aside you're still my best mate!" Sirius rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine so now I can't have any other friends but you, fine! I'll just go up to the castle and tell Peter to shove off and find another mate."
Sirius stared at his friend blankly. He hated it when James did that. He always had a way of putting things that made him feel both daft and terrible. He looked at James to prideful to admit he was wrong and concentrated on the spot just over James' left shoulder. He starred there intently as two figures came over the ridge. He looked at them as they walked closer. "Remus?"
James rolled his eyes. "What about Remus?"
Sirius shook his head. "No, Remus." He pointed to the two bodies walking towards him. James looked quickly, threw his cloak back on and watched his sick friend walk past them with a young looking woman leading him across the grounds. Sirius looked dumbfounded. "That was not Remus with his sister."
James nodded. "But why on earth would he be with Madame Pomfrey?"
"Maybe he got sick again and had to change his plans."
"Maybe." James replied staring over at the position they had disappeared at. Both of them stood in silence lost in their own thoughts. They didn't even notice the huge shadow that had loomed over them.
"Aren't ya s'posed tur be workin'?"
Sirius screamed and jumped a foot off the ground, before turning around. Once he did he was face to stomach with Hagrid. His head moved up the length of the gigantic man and smiled weakly. "Sorry."
"Well, jus' get yur work done and the sooner yur can get tur bed." Sirius nodded and went back to his weeding. James looked at Hagrid, hidden underneath his cloak, as the giant started to work on the pumpkin patch.
"I'll talk to you later." James said before turning towards the castle.
"Hey, I'm sorry I was a jerk." Sirius whispered back.
"No problem." James said as he started off towards the castle.
He could hardly believe that Remus would lie to them but what he had told them didn't add up with what they had just seen. He reached the fat lady and said the password in a hurry and stepped inside. He spotted Peter on the couch with a chessboard in front of him. James sat down opposite of Peter.
"I thought you might want to play." Peter said sheepishly.
James smiled at him and made the first move as a way of saying he would play with the small boy. They played two games in which James lost both of them because he was a horrid chess player. When Sirius came into the room he sat down across from Peter and looked directly at James.
"Something's up with Remus," Sirius said out of nowhere. "I don't know what, but there has to be."
James looked up from the chessboard at his friend. "I already knew that."
Peter just sat there trying to decipher the code they were speaking in.
"Yeah well, I asked Hagrid about what we saw and he said Remus had a detention."
James� brow furrowed in concentration. "But Remus never gets detention."
"No kidding." Sirius said rolling his eyes, they all knew that Remus tried his hardest not to cause problems and when it came to their pranks he made sure all evidence was dispensed so no one would get in trouble, "plus we would have been there had he have gotten one. I'm telling you, something is not right." Sirius leaned back in the chair as he ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
Peter continued to give the both of them strange looks, for a few seconds as they talked, taking in every word they said and still not understanding any of it. Once he had given up trying to figure out what they were talking about he swiftly told his Queen to take James' King and won the last match of the evening.
