The Marauders' Memories

Party With The Potters

Chapter 8-Party with the Potters

Sirius and James both found themselves in the car, with their formal attire on, waiting to depart for the Potter"s Christmas party. Mrs. Potter was already in the car, clicking her tongue impatiently as Mr. Potter and Henry slowly put their coats on. "Boys" she muttered. The drove South, picking up a few Potters on the way, to a nice empty field in Kent. Or at least, that"s what they thought before they entered within the charm and found themselves facing an enormous red tent. A short man emerged from the tent with a beam on his face.

"Ah more Potters! Come on in!" So they entered and looked at the guests that were already there. James and Sirius" eyes widened.

"Peakes? Coots? Lupin? What are you doing here?" James looked at Sirius however he was looking somewhere else.

"Jessie?" James swivelled around to find his third cousin in the corner of the tent, talking to a girl slightly younger than him he didn"t know. As she departed and went to Remus, Jessie looked up and waved at the boys.

"How comes you know Jessie?"

"She"s my second cousin!"

"What?!"

"Yeah! She"s my mum"s cousin"s daughter! If you know her then then grandfather must be Charlus Potter, your Grandfather"s cousin." James laughed.

"You know your family tree well, considering you"re planning on becoming anything but a Black!" After hitting James on the head they dashed over to her, however as soon as they approached her, she shook her head saying,

"I"m guessing you"re coming to talk to me about our confusing families, but seriously, I know it is important but it shouldn"t dictate your life. Go have fun. Yes, I"m part Black, part Potter, but really I"m me." She opened the book she was holding, and started reading it.

James and Sirius joined the boys in their class and talked of nothing in particlar, and watched the adults dancing.

"So, the Chudley Cannons are doing well aren"t they?" James hastily muttered as his parents came in front of them, dancing ...entusiastically to say so. Sirius and Peakes snorted at his feeble attempt of a diversion. James in turn, pointed at Peakes" parents on the dance floor, and Peakes quickly said,

"Yeah, you"re right! They"re doing extremely well!"

Halfway through the party, several of the party-goes went outside for a Quidditch match (The disillusionment charm still in place obviously). Sirius found himself being beater. They released the snitch- Sirius had no idea where they had gotten it from- and the matches began. Sirius and Peakes were beaters, Cootes, James, D"Arcy (A Gryffindor girl in his year- Sirius blushed) were chasers, Jessie as a seeker, and the girl she was talking to earlier, Grace, Remus" cousin, as keeper. They, were very kindly placed against some much stronger adults, including James" parents.

The match began, and the adults immediately possessed the quaffle and were swerving towards the goal. Cootes flew in front of them, yet they were unmoved, Peakes swiftly hit a bludger towards them, but it went for the wrong chaser, who didn"t have the quaffle. James" father aimed, concentrating on the goal, yet Grace looked more determined, he threw it towards the third hoop, but Grace few to meet it and flung it out into the pitch- Grace had saved it. D"Arcy was currently in possession of the quaffle, and she passed it James, who passed it back to D"Arcy, which achieved its purpose of confusing the adults, causing one of their beaters to randomly swing at the bludger, which nearly hit a flying seeker. Suddenly everyone"s attention was on the tense race going on above them as the two swerved and dived around following the tiny fluttering snitch, Jessie was just edging in front of him, D"Arcy gave a cry as Mrs Potter flew past her and at the race, Jessie ending futher ahed, and moved right infront of the two. They halted, and the snitch was gone out of sight. James gave the yell this time as the three chasers were tearing down the pitch towards the goal. Sirius aimed an upcoming bludger at them, and for once it went where he wanted and scatter the three chasers, but by then it was too late, and they had done enough to allow them to score. As play resumed, the stronger and older players of the opposing team did score several more times, it becoming increasingly harder because the youngsters became much better at working each other and working with each other. Their great teamwork also meant they found it quite easy to find themselves at the goalposts, aiming to shoot. They too got quite a few goals in. D"Arcy was aiming for their 7th goal, when a dash of colour streaked behind the goalposts stopped everyone in their tracks watching, except for the beaters who had to fend away the persistent bludgers. This time the other seeker was ahead of Jessie, reaching out, aware nobody would have the nerve to go in front of them. Sirius saw James move towards them, but was pulled back by Cootes. They only had 60 points to 80, well 70 to 80 as D"Arcy half heartedly scored. The tiny snitch was being grasped by the other seeker, fingers closing around it... and they had lost as he landed smoothly on the ground waving the snitch around. Everyone clapped, but everyone was sure some people were only doing so politely, and were swearing under their breaths. A look at James" fiery face confirmed this.

"Good game" Sirius said to James as the team landed on the ground.

"We were utterly destroyed."

"Come on James, they were older, stronger, more experienced, and knew each other better." James snarled. Sirius hit him on his head.

"Finally! I"ve been waiting to do that again!"

Remus, Peakes and Cootes looked at them with shocked faces as they began laughing. The moment abruptly came to halt by the arrival of Peter Pettigrew.

"Sorry I"m late! Overslept!" He cried panting.

"Woah, you must live far to be this late! Where d"you live?" James asked, still laughing.

"Ashford" he panted.

"Where"s that?" Peakes asked curiously. James had his mouth open.

"In Kent." Everyone"s mouth fell open.

"And we"re in Kent too?" James nodded.

Everybody burst into laughter.

Eventually everybody was full of food and drained of all energy. Several witches and wizards were taking their leave, Peakes and Peter among the first, Peakes, as he lived up in Scotland and Peter, as he was very tired. Soon, Coots, Lupin and most around their age had left when they were called to leave. They hopped in the car, and James quickly fell asleep, leaving Sirius in a awkward position of a few hour journey of silence, or conversations with some adults who had just thrashed him and James at Quidditch. He feinted sleep for a while, but gave in to the annoying sound of silence.

"So, why can"t we apparate?"

"Sorry Sirius, old age is kind enough to make me have trouble apparating without getting sick, or on two cases, splinced." The three Potters and the Black winced.

"Sorry. That must be horrible." Henry smiled.

With only one hour left of the journey, Sirius found himself talking to the Potters about everything from his parents to Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans to Goblins. However the quiet snoring suddenly dissapeared. Everyone looked around to see an awake and grinning James.

"How many sugared mice were there? Well I had a lot of them..." After several overdoses of sugar, Sirius was well aware that James + Sugar was not a good equation.

As he said that James "said"- more shouted,

"It"s too quiet. Can I sing?" Without waiting for a reply, James began singing, however unlike Sirius, his voice wasn"t the best, and the sugar had not only amplified it but made it a lot less pleasant to hear.

"HOGWARTS, HOGWARTS, HOGGY WARTY HOGWARTS!

TEACH US SOMETING PLEASE!

WHETHER WE BE OLD OR BAULD,

OR YOUNG WITH SCABBY KNEES!"

Everybody couldn"t help but smile as memories flooded them. They all joined in, not minding the terrible sound produced. They sang back to Godric"s Hollow where they found themselves once more drained of any energy they had, and they flopped on to their respective beds and slept, the sound of James, his father and his grandfather"s snores filling the house. The same was the case for everyone else who had attended the party.

The c**k crowed somewhere in Britain and the Potters stirred, but remained in bed. Last night for them was crazy. Eventually, much later in the day, they woke up to find it had snowed. James gasped, saying,

"It"s Christmas Eve!" like he just remembered. Then to Sirius" surprise he frowned. "Mum always serves beans for Christmas." He moaned. Sirius laughed loudly, so loudly that even he himself jumped. James" parents came in, followed by Henry.

"Beans?" They asked within a second of each other. Sirius felt a stab of jealousy of James" great family, before getting annoyed with himself, and then excusing himself to go to the bathroom. As he emerged, he found James waiting for him.

"What happened?" James asked.

"Nothing" James looked sceptical. "You have a nice family. Who know you, and are not just something keep a pure blood family growing," James dashed up to him and Sirius knew what was coming; James hit him on the head.

"i***t. Like I said at Hogwarts, My family will treat you like me. Not like that"s always a good thing if you hate beans." James replied. They both smiled as the went down for breakfast.

Meanwhile in Cornwall, Remus was still lying in bed smiling at yesterday. He found it unusual for him to be accepted and treated like a human. Well, nobody knew he wasn"t. He frowned at this. But still, if he kept it up, he could allow himself to feel liked. He smiled once more. From the door, his father and mother were watching his face with interest, as it revealed his feelings very clearly. He heard the door creak and looked up to see his parents.

"Breakfast is ready." His mother said quickly.

"Got it." He jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom. After a few minutes he emerged and went down to breakfast. As he sat down, a small black thing flew at him. He winced as it hit him, but he realised it didn"t hurt. The owl flew on to the table and dropped a letter in front of him. He opened it and read out the badly written scrawl.

Remus,

I"ll be coming over at around ten. See you then.

Peter.

He was so consumed with the party yesterday he forgot about Peter coming over. He looked up at the time. 9:55. Without thinking he jumped out of his seat and got changed into his normal clothes. He"d rather not have Peter see his blue night suit with stars on it. As he finished changing the doorbell rang. He ran down the stairs to find Peter with a huge backpack. He smiled, feeling extremely happy, and turned around to see his parents beaming at him. He lead Peter inside and they went straight to Remus" room. Peter started to get his stuff out when Remus asked,

"How"d you get here?" And this was enough to distract him from the task and they both talked for hours. As Mr Lupin looked in their room he gave a gasp. They had books open, yet he was certain that their homework would be that advanced, or even if they were at that level, they wouldn"t be told to have paper plane wars.

"What are you doing?" He asked, moving into the room. Peter went red, Remus looked embarrassed.

"Sorry, just messing around..."

"You can"t just fly one blank plane and have fun! And both those planes are terrible!" Both boys stared as he folded them both planes and added colour changing Charms on them, saying either Lupin or Pettigrew. He left the room and Remus smiled.

"Shall we continue?"

"Who won?" was the first question Remus"s father asked.

"Me." Replied Remus."But it was close."

Everyone enjoyed a pleasant meal before being sent off to their beds. The sun was setting. It was only a few hours until Christmas. All over Britain, people were shuffling and stumbling lethargically into bed, including James, Sirius, Remus and Peter. Soon it was quiet.

Peter was the first out of the four to wake that day, feeling excited. He wondered why it was still dark outside. He never got up this early unless it was a special day...

"Remus! Wake up! It"s CHRISTMAS!"

People were slowly waking up as the rising sun revealed the fresh flecks of snow drifting towards the ground, and the bells rang to mark the dawn of another Christmas Day.