Chapter 46: Third Year: The Slug Club
Summary:
The prank progresses, the first gathering of the slug club, and a confrontation.
Chapter Text
Monday 8th October 1973
"Sirius, you'd better come up with the replacement words, you're the most... er..."
"Verbose?" Sirius supplied, yawning. "Loquacious? Garrulous?"
"Exactly," Remus smiled. "I'll work on figuring out which spell we'll need, and James, you can figure out how we actually manage to cast it on the whole house... that's going to be really hard, I think - Peter, you better help with that."
"Hark at Moony!" James laughed, buttering his toast, "Giving the orders now."
"The marauders are a socialist utopia," Sirius yawned again, "We don't have leaders."
"Enjoying Muggle Studies, are you?" Remus raised an eyebrow. Sirius lay his head on the dining table, closing his eyes and flipping two fingers at Remus.
An owl landed on the breakfast table - it was James's. Sirius's owl had been confiscated by his parents so many times that he may as well not have one at all, Peter typically relied on the school owls, and Remus never received post anyway.
"What the hell?" James opened the letter proffered by the bird with a frown. "The... slug club?!"
"Oh yeah," Sirius opened a sleepy eye, "I got one too. Apparently ol' sluggy likes students who have a certain star quality. So, me, obviously. And I s'pose you too."
Neither Peter nor Remus received an invitation; but this was not much of a surprise. Peter was quite good at Potions, but lacked aptitude for almost anything else. As for Remus, he tried to fly under the radar where Professor Slughorn was concerned.
"We won't go then." James said, folding up his letter decisively. "All for one and one for all, us marauders."
"I don't care," Remus shrugged, "Go if you want to. I bet Lily's going."
"Do you!? Yeah, she is really good at Potions, isn't she?" James said, getting that funny look on his face again, "She's really good at everything, probably the cleverest in the year-"
"Oi!" Remus and Sirius said, in unison. James raised an eyebrow,
"Cleverest girl, then."
Sirius closed his eyes once more, satisfied, and attempted to doze through the rest of breakfast.
* * *
Thursday 11th October 1973
The party was held later that week. James, still uneasy about the exclusion of the two lesser marauders, tried to convince Peter and Remus to don the invisibility cloak and come anyway. Sirius thought this sounded like a good laugh, but Remus personally thought it beneath him. He had no desire to be among the chosen few. In the end, Peter declined too, though he had clearly been on the cusp of agreeing to the ridiculous scheme.
Anyway, Thursdays were Remus's favourite day of the school week. Specifically, Thursdays from 2pm to 4pm - that slot in his timetable allotted to Care of Magical Creatures. Their Wednesday lessons were always theory based, and Remus liked those too; he'd never heard anyone talk about biology like Professor Ferox. But Thursdays were given over to practical lessons, and the class would walk out onto the grounds, or else arrive at the classroom to find a new creature waiting for them, Ferox bright with excitement to show them.
After kneazles, they'd seen doxies and crups. This week was murtlaps. Mary and Marlene squealed at the creatures Ferox presented in a large hutch-like run at the back of the classroom. Remus couldn't blame them - murtlaps were extremely unappealing. They were rat-like creatures, with masses of writhing tentacles sprouting from their backs like maggots.
