A third chapter…finally. Haha. Now you have to read it because you clicked on it.
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"Will you stop worrying? You're making me nervous. And that, my friend," Sirius stopped talking for a moment to swallow his chocolate that he was sharing with Remus. "Is a very hard thing to do."
James was pacing up and down the area of his room, trying with all his might to get rid of the dull, aching pain he was having in his forehead along with the brats that he called friends. "Would you just try again?" he pleaded with Remus, who now had his face covered completely in chocolate and was still eating.
"I don't think there's anything that I can do." Remus told him after swallowing. "I believe that your brain is permanently trying to get rid of the damage you inflicted with Lily by leaving your head."
James glared at him. "You need to stop hanging out with Sirius." He turned around again to pace the other side of the room. Sirius smirked, making himself look even stranger with the immense amount of chocolate surrounding his mouth.
"Stop blaming me for your problems. Just because Remus can't cure your headache with a spell doesn't automatically mean that it's my fault." Remus laughed.
"See?" Remus giggled, unwrapping another bar of chocolate and adding it to the already huge pile on James' bed. "He's not as dumb as we thought he was." Sirius laughed while James began to hit his head to make the pain go away.
James stopped for a moment and turned to look at Sirius. "You do know that he just insulted you, right?" he asked, forgetting for a minute about his headache.
Sirius shook his head. "No he didn't, he just-" Realization dawned on him. "Wait a minute…"
James went back to pacing and listening to the sounds of Remus trying to avoid getting hit by Sirius or anything Sirius threw at him. There was a sudden sound of the doorbell and all three of them jumped, catching the other's eyes.
From downstairs they could hear James' mother answering the door. Any noise that was in the room prior to now stop completely; the whole house seemed to have become eerily silent. The boys listened with everything they had to hear the conversation going on below them.
"Why hello Mrs. Dongle! I'm so glad you were able to make it on such short notice!" they heard Laura exclaim. There was a collective sigh of relief. Lily wasn't here yet. They had nothing to worry about until then.
Then Sirius voiced what he and Remus had both been thinking. "Wait a second, who's Mrs. Dongle?" James shuddered.
"I'm not taking that as a good sign," Remus muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
"Mrs. Dongle is the old lady from across the street that my mum used to pay to baby-sit me," James explained, shuddering a little at the thought of her. "She was the worst…I…I don't even want to think about her…" Remus and Sirius glanced at each other.
"What's she doing here?" Remus finally asked, giving James a chance to calm down a little.
The realization that the old lady from across the street was actually once again in his house suddenly dawned on James, hitting him hard. There was a brief silence in which James' eyes suddenly got a lot wider and then he was out of the room, running so fast that he left a trail of dust behind him. Remus and Sirius laughed for a moment, and then followed him leisurely.
James reached the top of the stairs in record time, beating his old record by two seconds at least. His mother heard him immediately, using the sixth sense that only mothers have to detect their sons. She glanced up at him, her face half saying "oh, look who just stopped by!" and "If you dare do anything to be rude, I'll gut you like a fish!"
"Jamesie!" she laughed nervously, a smidgen surprised by her son's quick entrance. She continued even through the laughter that suddenly erupted from Sirius and Remus when she had used James' nickname. "Look who just came by to help!"
"To…to…help?" James asked, a frightened look on his face and in his voice.
As he looked at the older women that he had not seen in many, many years, all the old memories came back to him. The fiasco at the quidditch pitch in the backyard, the time when he purposely covered everything in putty just to make her mad after she had sent him to bed at six-o-clock (When he was nine and then again when he was eleven.), and all the times that he had to sit in the corner for `accidentally' magically shaving all her hair off.
Ok, so maybe the evilness was more of James than it was of her, but he sure wasn't going to admit that.
"Of course to help," Laura said, her smile frozen on her face. Obviously she remembered what James had done in his younger days all too well. "We will need a babysitter if there's going to be a teenage girl and three untamed teenage boys in the house while we're away." Her eyes narrowed slightly, only enough just so her son could see that she meant business.
Inwardly James cursed. Outwardly he fainted. This, of course, made Sirius and Remus laugh even harder.
His mother just sighed and gave an apologetic look to Mrs. Dongle. "He's really changed since you last sat for him, Mrs. Dongle, I swear," she half pleaded, trying to ignore the look on the older woman's face. "I mean, six years have passed and he's turning seventeen next week. At school he's gotten much better…" she trailed off, realizing that nothing at all had changed since James was eleven. "Well…I'm sure he'll be better behaved once we have a young lady in the house."
Mrs. Dongle sniffed, turning her nose up a little in a pompous way. "I'm sure," she said quietly. Laura was immensely relieved.
"Then you will help us?" she asked and received a slight nod which she took to be a yes. She let out her breath the she had been holding ever since Mrs. Dongle had step foot in her house. "Thank you so much!" With that, the two parted and Mrs. Dongle left using the front door. Laura turned around to face the stairs to find Remus and Sirius trying to resuscitate James, who was still lying on at the head of the stairs.
"I'll go get some water." She said, heading off toward the kitchen.
Sirius and Remus nodded in sync and then turned back to the task at hand.
"I still say that slapping him multiple times will do the trick." Sirius repeated for the billionth time. Remus had stopped laughing at it when he finally realized that he was being serious. (A/N: I know…no pun intended…lol) Remus smiled weakly.
"I don't think that his mum would appreciate that very much, Padfoot."
"But it would wake him up." Sirius argued back, smiling self satisfyingly. Remus shook his head.
"I need a pin." He sighed, sitting back to release the pressure off his legs.
"A pin? Why?"
"To deflate your ego," Sirius narrowed his eyes as if to say `very funny.' Remus just shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, you can't argue with the truth, my friend."
They sat there for a few more minutes, staring at James' lifeless form. "I think his mum got sidetracked." Sirius finally said. Remus nodded and they went back to their brainstorming, if you could call it that.
Suddenly the doorbell rang, singing the refrain to a version of the Hogwarts school song. As if on cue, James sat straight up, blinking and holding his head.
"Good timing," Sirius told him, now looking at his fingernails as if he had planned this the entire time. "Now you get to go answer the door like a good little boy."
"Agh…" James managed to sputter out. "Why me?"
"You live here, remember?" Remus asked, holding up two fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up? What's two plus two? Who's your best friend in the whole world?" James knocked his fingers aside trying to stand up.
"Moony, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." He said, practically falling down the stairs to get to the door.
Sirius smirked. "The answer to the last question was me, anyways," He looked at Remus sympathetically. "Don't give yourself too much credit."
Remus rolled his eyes. "Where's that pin when I need one?" Sirius laughed evilly. They watched James stumble down his stairs as the doorbell rang three more times. "Bet you all your wizard cards that it's who I think it is," Remus whispered to Sirius.
"Bet you that's why neither of James' parents has come down to answer the door." Sirius retaliated and Remus laughed.
James finally reached the door, pulling it open in the middle of a fourth rendition of the doorbell. Blinded by the son for a few moments, he shielded his eyes to see whoever was there, hoping to Merlin that is wasn't Mrs. Dongle, back again to make his life a living…well…you know what I mean.
"James?" a distinctly female voice asked, stepping closer a little to block out the sun behind her. James saw red hair, green eyes, and gulped. Oh, yeah. She was supposed to be here today.
"H…Hi, Lily…" he muttered, now gripping the door in his right hand with a death grip. "Forgot…uh…you…er…are here?" Lily looked confused for a few seconds then nodded tentatively.
"Am I allowed to come in?" she asked and James finally noticed that she was standing there buried by two humongous suitcases. James opened the door wider and allowed her to pass by.
"Lily!" Sirius screeched by way of greeting. He began to run down the stairs and then stopped, also noticing the bags. "What'd you pack the whole continent of north America?" Lily smiled a bit, glancing down at her things.
"I just…couldn't decide what to pack," she said by way of explanation. "I had no idea whether or not you boys were going to ambush me on my first night here or not."
"We wouldn't do that!" Remus insisted, coming down the stairs too. The four of them stood there silent, with one word floating through all of their minds; awkward.
"Prongs, are you going to stand there holding the door all day? `Cause if you do it long enough we're going to have to start to pay you." Remus said and Sirius laughed, enjoying the effect of James turning red so quickly.
"Allow me to take your things to your room, Lily my dear." Sirius added quickly, trying to take some of the awkwardness before it could rear its ugly head again.
Lily narrowed her eyes. "Don't call me that." She warned.
"Don't call you what? Lily?" Sirius asked, confused. Remus and James sighed in unison. With a huff, Lily handed her shoulder bag at Sirius' feet and he lifted the two bags in the air with a simple wave of his wand. The bags floated up the stairs and to Lily's new room, Sirius for some reason knowing where it was.
To relieve some of the tension of James not being able to open his mouth, Remus suddenly said, "James' birthday is next week."
Sirius laughed and added, "He'll be turning two."
Lily laughed for the first time since she got there, making James' face turn a darker shade of red. "That's funny, because I thought he would be only turning one."
James opened his mouth to retaliate, but at that moment, his mum and dad chose to reappear at the top of the stairs.
"Lily!" James' mom said excitedly. "We're so glad that you could make it!"
"Sorry that we have to leave you four alone so soon, though." James' dad motioned to the array of bags following them down the stairs as they headed for the door.
This seemed to shock his wife out of fun mother mode and into `these are the ground rules' mode. "Oh yes." She pulled some sheets of paper from out of her pockets. "Mrs. Dongle," James shuddered at the mention of her name, "Will be the lady staying with you four while we're away. You'll be sharing a room with her, Lily."
"They thought of everything, didn't they?" Sirius whispered to no one in particular.
"She's rather old, so don't be too rough with her." Her eyes fell on James and he suddenly started whistling to show his innocence. "She's just here to make sure that none of you try to pull anything. To give you a little freedom, though, she won't be here during the day." There was a release of breath from all four teenagers.
"It's mostly just the nights we're worried about." James' dad added, winking at his son, who suddenly wished that he was anywhere but there.
"That's it!" by this time all the luggage had accumulated at the bottom of the stairs with its owners standing by it. "We'll be gone for about the entire summer, but you can always reach us by floo or fire." She gave Lily and Remus each a piece of paper with the name of their tour's name on it. "You can always reach us here."
"Hey!" Sirius protested, noticing that she only gave Remus and Lily one. "How come James and I didn't get one?"
"You'd use it for something dangerous." Remus told him, putting the piece of paper in his pocket for safekeeping. Sirius muttered something about that being a good idea and became lost in his own little dream world.
"Don't worry," James was saying as Sirius came back to reality. "Mum, nothing serious will happen." Just a couple of pranks to a few people who deserve it. He thought, thinking of what he had planned for that night.
"For some reason, that doesn't console me." James' mom and dad answered together, identical looks on their faces. They started making their way out the door, the bags automatically following them.
After saying goodbye to their son and getting all of the bags out, James' mom stood in the doorway and said, "Remember that we trust you, alright?" and closed the door.
James, Lily, Remus and Sirius stared at each other, wide-eyed.
"I don't think that's such a good idea." Sirius finally voiced and the others nodded in agreement.
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it's shorter than the last chapter. I sorry! And I know I promised a prank, but, as you can see, that will have to wait until next chapter!
MWHAHAHAHAHA!! I have you all in the palm of my hands!!
Sorry. I had a relapse of `evil dictator' syndrome. It happens. Lol. j/k.
Thank you to everyone who reviews!
If you review I'll bribe you with anything you want! Tehe.
Emmablk1
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