Things James Potter

James walks in on Remus and Sirius, seventh year. MWPP-era.

James drips his way up the steps to the dormitory. He badly needs to practice his fast turns before the match on Saturday, and normally he would say that the weather didn’t exist that could stop him practicing when he needed to. Today, however, some gigantic celestial bucket was turned on its head directly over Hogwarts just as he took off, meaning that he had only been able to career blindly about the pitch for a few minutes before he nearly concussed himself on one of the goalposts. Even James admits that this probably meant he ought to call it a day, and though the little voice in his head he calls ‘motivation’ and Sirius calls alternately ‘the first sign of madness’ and ‘Colin the mad Quidditch player’ is screaming profanities and kicking him, most of him wants nothing more than to collapse face-first on his bed and possibly never get up.

He is fumbling with sodden, frozen fingers for the door handle, which seems to be dancing just out of his reach and blowing raspberries (and there’s actually a worryingly high possibility that this is really the case), when he hears a noise. It’s somewhere between ‘unf’ and ‘uurgh’ and his heart sinks slightly, because he knows from nearly seven years of occasionally traumatising experience what Sirius wanking sounds like and he’s really not feeling up to tip-toeing into his bed, sticking his head under the pillow and later pretending to have been either somewhere far, far away or temporarily deafened by a rogue Bludger. He opens the door, which miraculously doesn’t creak for once, and gets about halfway across the carpet before: