The Marauders: Year Six Part 2 #Wattys2017

Summer Plans

"Obviously, he couldn't have been there," Sirius was arguing heatedly, tapping the table in the Great Hall with his finger. "Being dead, as he is."

"He's been dead before," Remus said. "You know that."

"Yes well, I'm fed up with his shit, so I say he's truly dead this time," Sirius insisted.

James spoke up, "So now you can kill people with your insistence now, can you?"

"I could," Sirius said. "But seriously now, of course Mopsus is dead. Of course he is."

"I don't like it when you can kill someone and they just keep coming back!" Peter trembled, "Its scary!"

Remus patted Peter's shoulder. "Yes but just because it's scary —" he looked meaningfully at Sirius, "— or you're fed up, doesn't mean you can ignore it happening."

"I'm not trying to ignore it," Sirius said, "Just — literally how?"

Remus shrugged, "Dunno, do we? I reckon it's got something to do with time and his control of it or ability to see through it... perhaps travel through it... but I haven't got any idea what or how."

Sirius shook a fork he had speared a sausage on the end of, "Maybe there are hundreds of Mopsuses... Mopsusi? Mopsi?"

"Mopsi?" Remus asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Anyway, maybe there's hundreds of them and like we really do kill one off, but then another one comes along and takes his place. Maybe that's it."

"If they were different, they wouldn't all know what the others were doing or had done," James pointed out. "Its something else." He was staring up into the blue-sky ceiling, deep in thought.

Peter spoke up, "But you lot believe me, don't you?"

"I do," Remus said. "Even if you were dreaming I still believe that there's something happening. Dreams mean quite a lot, as we know from studying Divination --"

"You know. I didn't really properly study in that rubbish class," Sirius said, leaning backwards against the table, sprawling his legs out before him so his boots were stacked heel to toe. He glanced at Peter, "No offense."

Peter said, "But I really wasn't dreaming. I really did hear it."

James stared at the table, still deep in thought.

Suddenly Minerva McGonagall was behind him and Sirius choked on a cup of tea he was sipping. "Minnie," he said, laughing, "What the bloody hell happened to you?"

Remus, Peter, and James all looked up to see Minerva McGonagall covered in... well, nothing very good. Her feathered hat was drooping rather pathetically. "The chamber pots on the third floor are... feeling rather explosive this morning," she said slowly, choosing her words carefully as several other students along Gryffindor table were turning to look and beyond her, Sirius could see Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Slytherins all starting to glance her way as the stench reached them. "Do you four know anything at all about this?" she asked, looking each one of them in the eyes.

"Not at all, Min," Sirius said.

"Are you positively certain, Mr. Black?" McGonagall pressed, eyebrow raised, "This isn't another of your end of year hooligans?"