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Unusually Large Things


Next morning, the Marauders left their dormitory feeling as though they were on top of the world. The map was tucked into Sirius’s robes pocket, and the way he and James swaggered along made other students turn to watch as the four of them went by. It was as though the lot of them were glowing with their new found powerful knowledge over the halls of the school.

“What’s with you lot?” asked Frank Longbottom, looking up at them with a curious expression as they arrived, pushing Remus up to his spot at the table in his chair.

“Just having a bit of a brilliant morning,” James replied, snatching up a couple pumpkin juices from the table and turning to give one to Peter, who looked surprised James had helped him.

“Yup, a brilliant morning,” echoed Sirius, scooping up bacon.

“What’s so brilliant about it?” demanded Andy Woodhouse. He looked at James, “Aren’t you nervous? Tryouts are Friday. I’m not going to let people back on the team just because they were last year, you know.”

James said, “Oi, let me have a brilliant morning without stressing me out!”

Andy smirked and turned back to his breakfast.

When the boys had finished eating, they headed up to the Defense Against the Dark Arts corridor. Lily was already in the classroom, as was Professor Veigler. She was asking him questions about some of the homework he’d assigned the week before and he was chatting with her in a friendly tone as he set up what looked like a giant fishtank in the center of the room, complete with streams of bubbles issuing from the bottom. James looked at Sirius with a raised eyebrow. As evil as they now suspected Veigler to be, it was hard to deny that this looked like it was bound to be a very interesting lesson just the same.

“There you are!” said Veigler, smiling over at them as they entered, “Come in, come in - and close the door. We’ve got a very busy class today!”

They crowded around and Lily shifted away as James sat next to her, putting a bit more space between them and turning quickly to look at her notes. Sirius asked, “What’s this tank thing?”

“This,” Veigler said, “Is a tank for Grindylows.”

“Grindylows!” shouted Peter, his voice pitching into a high pitched yelp at the end. “What’ve you got a tank for grindylows for?” he looked around nervously, expecting a grindylow to appear out of thin air.

Professor Veigler made Peter’s fear a reality, waving his wand at a tall, curtain covered tank in the corner, he revealed a grindylow, floating in the small space. Veigler magicked the transfer tank across the room and dumped the grindylow within it into the much larger tank he’d just completed setting up along the wall. The grindylow swam a couple tight loops, his scales turning from a sick yellow-green to an unearthly bright blue-green. He pressed his webbed hands against the glass directly in front of Peter, and Peter promptly passed out.

“Oh dear,” Professor Veigler chuckled, “I suppose grindylows aren’t for the faint of heart… Ennerverate.”

Peter woke up gasping and sat up, “Grindylows!” he said in a panic, “There’s grindylows!”

“Yeah, we see’em, Pete, calm down,” Sirius said, playfully punching Peter’s shoulder, “It’s in a tank, see, look, it can’t get you.” The grindylow was making faces at them, sticking out its tongue and waving its tail in a menacing sort of way while scrabbling at the glass with its awful super long fingers.

Peter looked at it with a horrified expression, nose twitching uncomfortably.

“Surely the lot of you have heard of Jenny Greenteeth,” Professor Veigler said.

Lily said, “Loads of times in fairy stories - Jenny Greenteeth drowns children that get too close to water pools. But it’s just something parents tell their kids to scare them out of bad behavior… isn’t it?”

“Now it is,” said Professor Veigler, “But many years ago, Jenny Greenteeth was a particularly vengeful grindylow who lived in the Thames near Oxford, most usually, but she traversed the river bed searching for opportunities to snatch any living beings she could find that had come too close. She was most fond of children and elderly persons, as they tended to move the slowest and were therefore the easiest to catch, but there was none that she wouldn’t take. Rumors had it from the few who managed to escape her clutches that she was searching for a friend to live with her in her underwater home and was angered when the frail humans couldn’t survive without oxygen and died soon after she’d dragged them down, some not even making it to her home before meeting their watery grave.”

Sirius shivered, “Oh this is good,” he murmured.

Peter looked at him, “I’m never going near that bloody lake again.”

“Don’t be a baby,” James said. “There’s no grindylows in the lake. Sirius and I have swam in that lake loads of times and never been dragged under by Jenny Greenteeth.”

“Don’t be so sure, Mr. Potter,” said Professor Veigler, “This grindylow before you is on loan from the mermish king that lives below the waters of the lake.”

Sirius’s eyes widened. “There’s mermen in the lake?”

“Oh yes,” Veigler replied, “One of the most important clans of merpeople dwell beneath the lake here at Hogwarts.”

“Wouldn’t the Giant Squid eat them?” asked Peter nervously.

“I should think they would eat the Giant Squid, rather,” Remus replied.

Veigler smirked, “They’ve come to a treaty with one another, as I’ve heard it.”

Peter said, “Yup. Definitely not going near the lake ever again. I don’t fancy being murdered by grindylows or their mermish keepers.” He shook his head.

“Well, Mr. Pettigrew, perhaps you’ll feel better about it after our class for today we are going to learn about defending ourselves from a grindylow attack!” Veigler grinned about at them, “Who wants to be our first victim?”




Sirius was leading the way to their Divination class from Defense, and they’d walked fairly quickly so as to leave Lily a bit behind to talk without her hearing them. “Despite knowing Veigler’s into something, there’s no denying that was a brilliant class,” he said, looking about to see that the others agreed with him. James, and even Remus, nodded.

Peter shivered, though. “I don’t like grindylows,” he said. “We have a pond outback of our house and my dad always said it was infested with grindylows. Our cat got snatched once. He used to say if we were bad he’d chuck me and my sister in to feed them!”

James looked at him in surprise. “Your da said that?”

Peter nodded, “Yeah, scared the stuffin’ out of us both, I reckon, we never played by the pond, afraid that Jenny Greenteeth was going to come after us.”

“Does your sister go to Hogwarts?” Remus asked, suddenly realizing he’d never seen Peter’s infrequently mentioned sister.

Peter hesitated, “No.”

“How come we haven’t met her?” demanded James.

Peter turned red, “Dunno. You never come around to my place.” He quickly sped up to get away from the other boys, rushing to get ahead of them.

James looked around at the other two, “What was that about, you reckon?” he asked.

“Dunno,” Remus answered.

“Tell you what, I’ll find out,” Sirius said with an air of determination.

In Divination, James sat himself down and started scribbling some last second tidbits in his dream journal, remembering he had forgotten to make up something for the night before. When Lily finally made her way over to the table with hesitation, he looked up at her with a grin. “Morning, Love,” he greeted her.

Lily sat stiffly on her cushion, well aware that several of the occupants of the room were looking and snickering their direction. “Morning,” she said quietly.

“Got some good dreams for me, Evans?” James asked, grinning.

Lily replied, “I have not had any dreams of you, Potter, nor will I ever.”

James laughed, “Well, I said for me but it would have been alright if you’d dreamed of me, too, I reckon.” He winked.

Lily reddened and hurriedly worked on finding the dream translations section of Unfogging The Future again as Professor Vablatsky waved her shawl-draped arms and announced class was to begin. Lily looked over at James, “Let me see your journal.”

James grinned, shoving it over to her in exchange for her own. His eyes twinkled, “Try not to be overcome with feelings for me.”

Lily raised an eyebrow, suddenly unsure she wanted to read the things James had written in his horribly untidy script. It was a load of tosh as usual, more rubbish he’d clearly made up, rambling on about the destruction of dragons and defeat of dark wizards in fiery duels that read like a muggle comic book. James had even doodled out a moving rendition of one such duel, complete with a little bubble that read POW as the drawings fought. Lily looked up at him, “Why can’t you write down real dreams?” She asked, “The only thing to be interpreted here is that you’ve got an unusually large imagination.”

“I have a number of unusually large things, Evans.”

“Like your ego, for starters.”

James chuckled happily, looking down at the book in amusement. This bantering conversation was precisely what he liked about Lily the most. He ran his hands over the page, feeling the slight bump of her ink on the parchment as he read. Once again, she’d been pretty honest about her dreams. Where she omitted things, she notated that in the writing for him. I’m not telling you about what happened next, but that should be enough for you to go on anyway, and so forth. He smirked at these little notes, always starting with Potter -- and always ending with -- Evans.

Meanwhile, over at their table, Sirius was conducting an investigation. He’d shoved his fictional account of his dreams across the table to Peter and taken up Peter’s journal, though he’d only cracked the cover without actually reading it. “Say, Pete, tell me about your sister.”

Peter shrugged, avoiding eye contact, “There’s not a lot to tell, really.”

Sirius leaned back, throwing his feet up onto the table before him as he reclined on the cushion. “Is she a troll? Is that why? You’re ashamed of your ugly sister?” Sirius teased him, trying to prod him into talking about her some more.

Peter muttered, “No.”

“Is she very good looking?” Sirius grinned, “Are you afraid I’ll try and snog her?”

Peter glared at him then hissed, “No. I don’t care who you snog.”

“When what is it, Peter?” Sirius asked, “Why are you being dodgy?”

Peter closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then whispered, “She’s a squib, alright? A squib.”

Sirius sat up, “A squib? You’re not serious?”

Peter took a deep breath, looking quite uncomfortable. “Yes, I am. We’ve only just found out. But she’s a squib, which means it runs in my family, which is probably why I’m so bloody terrible at everything. I’m probably one step off from being a ruddy squib myself.”

The grin melted away from Sirius’s face as he recognized the hurt and worry in Peter’s voice. “Dunno if it works that way, though, Peter,” he said in a gentle sort of tone. “I mean surely many great wizards have had squib siblings in the past, I doubt it’s genetic…”

Peter stared very hard down at Sirius’s dream journal, his eyes burning. “All I know is I’m barely passing my classes and Maggie’s eleventh birthday came with no letter from Hogwarts and Father was shattered. Mother was relieved she only had to let one of us leave, with everything that’s going on. She didn’t want to let us go to Hogwarts at all, Father only just talked her into it. You know how protective she is…”

“Yeah, I remember,” Sirius nodded solemnly. He paused. “So her name is Maggie, yeah?”

Peter pursed his lips, “Yeah.”

“It’s a nice name,” Sirius said.

Peter eyed him a moment, then said, “That thing I said about not caring who you snog? I take it back. Don’t snog Maggie. Ever. Please.”

Sirius reached over and patted Peter’s shoulder, “I won’t.” He paused, then, “I’m sorry, mate, I didn’t mean to tease you before. I didn’t know you were upset about it.”

Peter shook his head, “It’s alright.”

Sirius opened Peter’s journal and started working on interpreting the dreams, glancing up at him now and then. “Let me know if you need any help, mate,” he said. “Seriously.”

“Thanks,” Peter nodded. “But I’ll be alright. I hope.”

Sirius nodded. “You will. You’re not a squib. You’re a very talented wizard, Peter. You just need to stop worrying so much and it’ll get better. I promise. You’re a Marauder, you’re one of us. We’re all here for you, okay?”

Peter continued staring at the book, his eyes even closer to tears now than they had been a moment before. He felt a very large, very constricting lump rise up in his throat and he nodded vigorously.

Sirius smiled, “Very good, then,” and turned back to Peter’s journal.

At the very next table, Severus Snape was finding himself quite unable to concentrate. He was staring off across the classroom to where James and Lily sat. He could see Lily was working very hard at her interpretations while James lazily dragged his finger over the book open on his lap. It should have been him, Severus, paired with Lily, not that great prat. He’d thought this during each and every divination class since the start of term. Her dreams were surely mostly about him anyway, surely this was boring Potter a good bit, reading Lily going on and on about her feelings for Severus…

Suddenly overcome with the desire to know for certain it was Severus she was dreaming of at night, Severus concentrated hard on James, eager to break into his mind and hear what it was Lily was dreaming for himself through James’s brain..

“Is Potions your favorite topic?” Remus asked suddenly, breaking Severus’s concentration.

“What?” Severus looked up, annoyed with Remus for having broken his legilimency.

“Potions,” Remus said. “You’re very good in Potions, I’ve noticed. I was just curious if it’s your favorite topic.”

Severus sighed, “I guess so, what does it matter to you?”

Remus looked taken aback, “I was only making conversation, mate… sorry. Blimey. No need to get defensive.”

Severus turned back to staring at James and Lily. “Yeah, no reason,” he murmured. But if there was no reason, then why did it feel like there was a reason?

Remus followed Severus’s stare to Lily and James. James had paused in his reading and was just watching her reading quietly. As Remus watched, she looked up and caught him staring and she said something to him, nudging the book in his lap and James laughed and Remus read his lips as James answered her, ”Yes, Love,” before turning back to the book.

When Remus looked back at Severus, he saw that his face was very, very red and twisted into a very jealous, raging sort of expression indeed.