The Life that Never Lived ? (Chamber of Secrets)

CORNELIUS FUDGE

"Sounds like a nice visit," Remus snorted, "going to confront one of your friends about whether or not he's been tromping around the castle and letting a snake lose."

Harry, blushing madly at the suggestion, but unable to deny it, simply read.

"See," Harry said after reading that, "I didn't think Hagrid had done it on purpose!"

"Alright then," James said, shrugging and smiling, "we weren't mad at you, just surprised is all. Following that line of thinking, yeah I could see how you could think Hagrid had done this."

"Let's, not answer that," Remus muttered to himself, already coming up with a fair few just off the top of his head.

"That's an interesting note," Lily nodded, "it must mean that whoever really was attacking must have felt to unsafe to continue doing this, so they let Hagrid take the fall. If they had kept going, it would have proven Hagrid's innocence."

"I still can't work out how they're doing it again now," Sirius huffed.

"That would be an interesting visit for sure," James snorted.

"Wow, that's quite a gap," Sirius said in surprise.

"Let's hope that extends to, oh, eternity," Lily muttered.

"I hate that they did that second year, but don't have teacher meetings until fifth year," Sirius huffed, "seems a little backwards don't you think?"

"What classes did you take?" Lily asked Harry, hoping he would remember this small tidbit.

Harry frowned in thought, but shook his head as he admitted, "I've no idea. I just remember I signed up for the same stuff as Ron."

"Best thing you can do," James nodded, "at least if you don't like the class, you have someone to commiserate with."

"Can't blame you there," Remus nodded.

"You lot just hate the class because of who's teaching it," Lily snorted.

"Can't blame us," Sirius laughed.

"Which is really sad," James sighed.

"Still an important lesson," Sirius chuckled.

"Arithmancy," James said at the same time Lily said, "Ancient Runes."

Harry smiled at both of his parents while they gave each other amused smiles.

Lily asked, "If you hated Arithmancy, why didn't you drop it?"

"Because you didn't," James replied like he thought it was obvious, "and I wanted to keep one extracurricular class with you."

"I still can't believe you convinced Peter to keep doing it with you," Remus laughed.

"Are you kidding me?" James snorted, "Pete was better at that class then I was. I would have flunked out if it wasn't for him."

"Then why did he complain about it so much?" Sirius asked.

"Because he was 'sick of watching me drool the whole time'," he responded with a grin, giving Lily a suggestive look.

Lily rolled her eyes indulgently at him, finding this far more amusing now then if he'd told her this back during their years at school.

Harry waited for a moment, but was slightly disappointed when he realized this particular conversation had wound down to a close, so he decided to keep going.

"And that right there was my earlier point," Sirius laughed, but there was a tinge of sadness in it this time as he continued. "What if that kid wanted to grow up and work for the Ministry working with Muggles? You have to have an OWL in Muggle Studies to even apply!"