The Marauders: Year Seven Part One

The Meeting of the Order

"He thinks you hate him, you know."

"I do hate him." 

"You don't hate him, stop being an arsehole." 

Sirius paused, standing on a tall boulder, and took a long drag off the cigarette he'd been puffing upon as they'd been walking about in the woods. He looked back over the lake, at the castle, looking high above, silhouetted against the cold, stark white of the sky, which threatened snow. James could smell the snow, he said, but Sirius thought him insane for it. He lowered the cigarette and let out a long stream of smoke through his nose, looking a bit like a small dragon.

"I'm not saying that you're as close to him as, like, me or Remus, but he's still one of your best mates," James insisted. He was a couple paces off, brandishing his wand about, knocking the remaining dead leaves from trees and brush as he walked. "He's still a Marauder."

Sirius grunted. "I s'pose. I mean, by necessity. What else were we going to do with the little fucker while we have our adventures?" Sirius raised the smoke again and muttered, "Could've told on us if he wasn't involved. Could've betrayed us long before now." He stuck it between his teeth.

"Exactly, he could've betrayed us long before now," James said. He held out his hand and Sirius pulled the box of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and tossed them to James, who shook one out of the box and lit it with his wand before tossing it back to Sirius and leaning against the rock that Sirius stood on. He stared out at Hogwarts, too. "He didn't, though."

"Not until now," Sirius said, sliding down to stand next to James. His boots landed with a thud and he dusted himself off and looked at James as he leaned beside him against the rock.

"Just try to be a little nicer?" James asked, the cigarette bobbing between his lips as he spoke.

Sirius nodded. "Yeah, I'll try."

"Thank you," James said. He took the cigarette out and made a face. "Bleeding hell, no wonder I've quit. That's fucking disgusting." He threw it down, grinding it out with his toe.

Sirius nodded, looking at his, "Yeah. They are pretty gross." He hesitated, then chucked his down, too. "What do you reckon we saw in them before?"

"Rebellion?" James guessed, laughing.

Sirius adjusted his leather jacket and looked over at James with raised eyebrows. "I'm a fucking gay ass Gryffindor from the Black family that's shagging a werewolf on a pretty much daily basis, do I really need another thing to rebel with?"

James laughed. "You forgot your motor bike, tattoos, long hair, muggle music..."

"Bleeding hell, I'm a stereotype," Sirius groaned and kicked the cigarette away.

James grinned, "Perhaps you ought to take up knitting."

"Knitting? Why knitting?"

"It's the least punk rock thing I could think of," James replied.

Sirius grinned, "Dunno, I could knit some sweaters for my gay-as-fuck boyfriend."

"Of course you found a way to make it rebellious," James laughed. "Alright, let's do what we came out here to do and get back to the Shrieking Shack. I still need to get back to the castle for the meeting..." Quickly, they both started setting protective charms all about the woods.

James cleared his throat as loudly as he could. "Excuse me, everyone... hullo... evening." A good deal of faces turned to look at him. James flushed. "We're here to figure out a plan to help one of our own... and when I tell you lot what's going on, you're going to jump to certain conclusions, but they're wrong - and we're all going to react from a forgiving place, with respect, and care, alright?" He looked about at the faces surrounding him, Regulus Black's among them.