Dwelling on Dreams (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Another Summer

Summer taunted them with beautiful weather, sunshine drifting lazily down past the towers and creating cool spots of shade under the trees. The lake sparkled in the light and pupils found themselves inventing a reason to walk past it on the way to lessons, a select and speedy few stripping off their shoes before splashing in it. Saturdays and Sundays quickly became the time to do any extra work, almost the entire school congregating somewhere in the grounds and stretching out on the grass with their schoolwork. Quidditch became doubly popular once again, crowds and crowds of pupils watching practices and matches with bated breath and everyone felt sorry for the fifth and seventh years whose exams loomed towards them like a giant trying to block out the sun.

All was not perfect though and the reports of disappearances and deaths were becoming more frequent, though still few and far between. For the most part, summer continued unthreatened.

Even the second years began to feel the strain of their exams, though nothing compared to O.W.L.s they remained daunting, and more often than not their time outside was spent testing each other on a particular subject.

“What does ‘Expelliarmus’ do?” asked Mary, another in a long list of questions as she rifled through their Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook.

“Disarms you,” they all answered simultaneously.

“What does… how do you avoid vampires?”

“Garlic and a stake through the heart,” supplied Alice.

“Yeah. How do you… tell a troll from a giant?”

“Trolls are less developed; giants are basically big hairy people but trolls are stupid. They’re fatter and less vicious unless they are scared or attacked.”

“You got everything apart from language. Trolls grunt whereas giants have something that approximates to a language,” she said, reading from the textbook. “Why do wizard duels need seconds?”

“In case someone dies.”

“Speaking of a wizard duel…” said Cassie, her attention drifting away from revision, “who’s that?”

A large group of people had gathered round in a circle with a bunch of onlookers standing by nervously. As they watched the circle of burly Slytherins parted and they could see a small boy, probably a first year, in the centre. Suddenly another group of people pushed past and hexed the Slytherins, distracting them enough for the small boy to run back to his friends. “What do you think you’re doing?” they heard the distant shout as someone stepped forwards.

“Stopping you from harming that poor kid!”

“It’s none of your business what we do!” screamed a thin, black haired boy who came round from the back of the group.

“Oh look, Snivellus is here to defend his friends. Well we’ve got a special surprise for you Snivelly,” they said as curses were flung between both sides, somehow ending up with the majority of the Slytherins lying on the ground.

Lily was halfway towards them by this time but everyone except the hexed Slytherins had left by the time she got there. She pulled Snape up and walked back towards the group of girls.

“Oh look, she’s bringing ‘Sev’ back.”

“I don’t really know why she likes him; she hates the Dark Arts and I could have sworn I saw him using them the other day,” said Alice before plastering a smile onto her face. “Hi Severus,” she said as he sat down with them.

“Er Lils, hope you don’t mind but we were actually just thinking about going for a bit of a swim,” said Cassie. “Do you want to come?”

“Oh well me and Sev were going to talk so… I’ll stay here and watch and maybe join you later.”