The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

Dark Conversations in Dark Corridors

After returning from the detention, James and Sirius had eaten their supper quickest of all the Gryffindor students and rushed off to the tower so that Sirius could reveal his surprise to James. When they reached the dormitory, Sirius pulled the snitch from his pocket with a flourish. James's eyes widened with excitement. "A real snitch!" he cried, excitedly, and Sirius dropped the little golden ball into James's hand, grinning. "Wow, it's heavier than I imagined," he said, running his fingers around the little ball and weighing it carefully with his palm. It felt comfortably at home. As he stared at it, the little ball unfurled its wings and fluttered against his fingers. "Where did you get this?" he asked, looking up.

"I found it in the locker rooms," Sirius said, quite proud of himself.

"Isn't that sort of stealing?" James questioned, nervously.

"They've got loads of snitches, I'm sure just one won't be missed. Plus it's not like I've really stolen it, have I? It's still on school property."

James nodded, eager to accept any excuse at all that would allow them to keep the little winged ball. He grinned up at Sirius. "By next term, when we can really try out we're going to be practically bloody professionals!" he looked around and quickly backed across the room to be opposite of Sirius and tossed the little winged ball across to him.

Sirius reached up and snatched at it, but it zoomed off with its little wings humming, zipping about the dormitory. "Quick, get it!" Sirius laughed, jumping up onto his bed.

James jumped up onto his own, then across the gap to Remus's, leaping onto Remus's heavy trunk and waving his arms about over his head desperately as the snitch zoomed by. "Blimey, they're faster than I imagined, too," James commented.

"I got it!" Sirius cried – but he hadn't. He landed with a heavy thump onto Peter Pettigrew's bed and tumbled off the other side.

James laughed as Sirius's legs kicked up over the side of the bed, "You could go pro with moves like that."

"And so could you," Sirius replied, rubbing his buttocks as he laughed back at James, who was straddling his and Remus's beds, his arms flailing about in the air.

When Remus and Peter came back into the dormitory nearly an hour later, Remus frowned at the mess of jumbled pillows and paper airplanes that the boys had been chucking about trying to knock the snitch from the air.

"What have you two been up to?" he asked, jaw-dropped, "This mess!"

"Sirius got us a snitch," James offered with a grunt as he hurtled himself off Remus's bed and onto his own.

"James hasn't caught it yet," said Sirius from the bed. He'd given up some time ago and just let James jump from bed to bed trying to capture it himself.

"There's obviously something wrong with it," said James sourly, whose level of amusement at the snitch had been steadily dropping the longer it took to capture the thing as it zoomed about. "As though it's repelled by us, or something." He frowned. "Where'd it go now?" He looked around.

Peter Pettigrew held up his palm. He had the snitch, which was laying calmly in his hand, its wings barely fluttering, as though it had been tamed. All three of the other boys looked surprised. Sirius was sitting up, having flung a copy of James's quidditch magazine aside. "How in the bloody hell did you do that?" he demanded of Peter.

Peter Pettigrew shrugged, "It flew over and I just sort of caught it. Wasn't too hard, really, it was as though it wanted me to catch it." He stared at the little gold ball in his palm. "Maybe it was tired."

Sirius's brows stitched together and he looked at James with concern.

James glowered, "Like I said, obviously there's something wrong with it if Peter can catch it before I can." He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.