I'll Take it Shaken, Not Stirred

Chapter 7: Praedam, Silth, and Grossman

Origins of the Recipe: all rights to JKR. Jewels owns zip, zilch, natta.

Recap: Lily and James discover their memories have been modified and can't remember some details of the forest-extravaganza, though they get the basics. Alastar Moody comes to Hogwarts with some aurors, there's an introduction to Eden's family, Lexi avoids Frank's mom, Madame Pomfrey goes spastic, and the head students speculate on Dumbledore.

For those who don't like ten-year-long-chapters, I made this short-ish. Love to reviewers!

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"Not a shred of evidence exists in the favor of the idea that life is serious." –Brendan Gill

And slowly (very slowly) things began to feel normal again.

Mothers finally stopped showing up- begging to see their children for the sixth millionth time; first years stopped asking the older students to show them protective spells; Moody stopped patrolling the castle corridors- jumping out at people who weren't supposed to be there; and the knowledge of impending classes was encouraging. Things began to feel more like Hogwarts again. Slightly.

Monday morning found the Marauders down to breakfast early, but it found most of the school there too. Professor Dumbledore was sitting in his proper spot again, and the bewitched sky overhead indicated good weather. Things were looking up.

Peter Pettigrew had finally been released from the Hospital Wing the day before, and he had been brought up to Dumbledore's office almost the moment Madame Pomfrey would allow it. Unfortunately, his memories seemed to have been similarly tampered with (he murmured something about 'not being able to remember all that shit' to James, just before he collapsed into bed that night), and despite the fact that Madame Pomfrey insisted that no one suspicious had come near them during the night, it was obvious something had happened. What exactly that was had been troubling James for some time now.

But as he consumed his forcefully larger-than-last-week's breakfast, he (ironically, perhaps) suppressed all thoughts of anything non-scholastic, and tried to focus on the imminent classes.

The Heads of Houses were walking up and down their house's table, handing out schedules. McGonagall approached the four Marauders (all at breakfast together for the first time that year) and paused, looking thoughtfully down at her list.

She handed Remus his schedule first, then shuffled through her papers some more. "Mr. Pettigrew..." she handed Peter his, then added strictly: "Miss Shaw has agreed to tutor you again this year in Charms. You'll work hard, if you want your N.E.W.T." Peter blushed and nodded.

"Potter and Black. There you are," she handed two schedules to James and Sirius. "I should warn you: if anything explodes in my class today, I will personally make sure you have detention every Friday night until December, whether I have proof it was your or not. Good morning." She proceeded grandly down the table, and the Marauders examined their schedules.

"We'd better have lots of classes together," mumbled Sirius, as his eyes scanned the paper. "Not like that rubbish last year, where we had separate Transfiguration and Charms."

"Ya," agreed James resentfully; "I had to take Charms with Hufflepuff and Slytherin."

"That's because you always got in trouble when you were with Padfoot," Remus said, as he too looked over his schedule. "9:00, Monday: Double Defense Against the Dark Arts with Ravenclaw House..." he read aloud.