I wouldn’t front the scene if you paid me
“Go on, Marls! Put it in!”
Marlene McKinnon is practically carried into the room where the Goblet of Fire awaits entrants. Lily Evans and Mary MacDonald give her no chance to rethink, back out or even hesitate as they push her across the age line Dumbledore has drawn.
James watches forlornly as she begins writing her name on a piece of parchment.
“‘Eternal glory’,” he bemoans his lot. “Be brilliant, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, rather you than me,” Sirius fires back, tone slightly acerbic. “If I won, it’d only be another feather in the cap of House Black.”
“It’s not fair, though,” Marlene says, her eyes on James. She knows how badly her friend had wanted to enter.
“It’s a Gryffindor win, either way,” James smiles broadly, genuinely happy for her, even if he’s feeling mildly sorry for himself.
He’s been working on accepting it. So this year isn’t as exciting for him as it possibly could be? Maybe it’ll be nice just to be a spectator for once. Besides, they’ve still got quidditch. Let someone else risk their lives for school pride or whatever; go down in history as one of Hogwarts’ finest…
Marlene catches James’ eye again, but this time because she’s stopped dead in her tracks to stare at the door. Walking in purposefully and flanked on either side by two girls and two boys – as though the entire thing were choreographed for maximum dramatic effect – is a doll-like, dark-skinned, Beauxbatons girl with waist-length braids, embezzled here and there with gleaming gold. She shows no hesitation at the age line, though her friends do, but one of the boys – a Ravenclaw boy James knows is called Barty Crouch – cheers her on. She produces a piece of pretty periwinkle stationery that she stands on tiptoes to place delicately in the fire of the Goblet. Her entourage cheers her on, dissolving the entire room into applause. Marlene had gotten the same.
Speaking of Marlene, she is staring shamelessly, mouth agape, at the Beauxbatons girl. Never in James’ life has he ever seen anyone lose their mind for someone so quickly and completely. He’s positive that if this girl were to ask Marls to throw the tournament for her, she would, no questions asked. If Marlene is chosen for Hogwarts, there is no way they’re winning this year.
“Oi, McKinnon?” Barty Crouch calls out, then, looking far more amused than he has any right being. “Take a picture. It lasts longer.”
Marls shakes herself, blushing something furious, before storming from the room, Lily and Mary rushing after her. In their wake, discussion breaks out. Seems everyone is thinking the same as James. Even Sirius, eyes glued to where Marlene had disappeared, looks crestfallen.
“We’re fucked,” he laments.
“Absolutely not,” James reprimands, turning to him. “I don’t want to hear this defeatist attitude. I want to see you upbeat!”
“We’re fucked!” Sirius repeats, in a chipper tone.
James rolls his eyes right as a sudden hush falls over the room.
Stalking through the doors, highmaster in his wake, is a tall, grizzled-looking boy from Durmstrang. Under his layers of furs, his stature is intimidating. This is only compounded by the two severe, silvery scars slashing diagonally across his face. Somehow, however, this does not make him any less strikingly handsome. He carries himself with authority and confidence clearly instilled in him by years of being the best at just about anything he tries. This, it would seem, includes courting, since he makes no secret of turning his head to catch Sirius’ eye and dropping him a dark-eyed wink from beneath a tousle of artful strawberry blonde waves.
Besides James, Sirius’ breath, audibly, catches in his throat, his hand reaching down to grip James’ wrist in a vice. Fantastic.
Now even Durmstrang has a chance, and James is spending the rest of the year listening to his best friend go on and on about some Serbian Chad. Can things get any worse?
Later, James would come to hate himself for testing fate with that question.
* * *
Turns out, the Beauxbatons girl is named Dorcas Meadowes. According to some of the Ravenclaws, she may look poised and harmless, but she’s got a killer instinct, and she’s quick with a wand, and even quicker with a sharp comeback. Figures she and her two friends, a French student of indeterminate gender with mint green hair and a tall Mexican girl with a figure that could stop traffic, have inserted themselves into the single worst clique at Hogwarts: Regulus Black and his friends.
The tall, formidable boy from Durmstrang is a fellow Brit, but not from the same side of the tracks as Sirius and James, if the rumours are to be believed. He has two much younger boys who frequently come up to him, all seemingly sporting similar scarring to his, albeit noticeably worse. According to his entry, his name is Remus Lupin, and judging by the cheers and the claps on the back he got when Dumbledore read his name, he’s generally well-liked by his schoolmates, despite never being seen hanging out with any of them.
And, in the end, it had been Marlene the Goblet had chosen for Hogwarts. The entire school had gone mental, cheering her on, and she hadn’t been half as put together as the other two champions upon being named. She’d run among the rows of students, doling out high fives and laughing. James isn’t ashamed to admit he’d let himself be excited for her, as well, yelling loud enough to drown out requests for the students to quieten down.
All in all, it’d been a fun evening. Not quite fun enough to make up for James’ abject failure of an attempt at Amortentia today in Potions, and the subsequent pathetic mark he’d gotten straight out the gate, but a sufficient enough distraction. He just doesn’t know how he’s going to make it through the year. It’s been a single week of school and seventh-year is already harder than all the other years combined!
“James.”
He looks up into a pair of familiar, although not altogether welcome, eyes. Hanging around by the portrait hole is Peter Pettigrew, James’ childhood-best-friend-turned-shameless-Slytherin. James is quite keen on just ignoring the waste of emotional connection, but Peter grabs him by the arm, stopping him.
James looks at the hand gripping him and then up at Peter, raising his eyebrows, and Peter lets him go immediately, knowing how James feels about being touched.
“Remus Lupin sent me. He wants to discuss a proposition with you,” Peter says, as though even speaking to James repulses him.
He can’t very well say the feeling isn’t mutual.
“What proposition?” James asks, planting himself.
“He’d rather it was discussed in private.”
James gives a single, mirthless chuckle. “And he sent you to talk me over? Goodnight, Pettigrew.”
“Well, you did always want to leave this place a legend,” Peter quips. “You’ll go down as the first Head Boy in history to repeat seventh-year. Monty and Effie will be thrilled.”
James’ wand is out and levelled at Peter’s face so quickly, Peter doesn’t even have time to take a step back.
“Piss off,” James grits out, “or keep pushing your luck. See where it gets you.”
With a visible bob of his Adam’s apple, Peter pries his eyes away from James’ wand to meet his gaze. “Lupin wants to help. Just go see him. What’ve you got to lose?”
James finds him atop the Astronomy Tower, hands in his pockets as he peers out over the grounds. The silvery scars on his face appear almost to shimmer in the light of the waxing moon. Now, James is by no means short, but Remus Lupin towers over him in more than just stature. He’s never met someone so intimidating.
Suddenly, James reckons he may have a lot to lose indeed.
“James Potter,” Lupin says without turning.
He pronounces it ‘Jayms Paw-ah’, as though he’d grown up somewhere London-adjacent. It makes him no less intimidating.
“I received your summons,” James mouths off, wanting to seem unaffected.
“That Pettigrew? He’s a kiss-arse, but he’s useful,” Lupin surmises, finally facing James.
Despite it always being freezing up here, Lupin is in shirt sleeves, incredibly impressive arms on display. James notes how those silvery scars mark his skin there, too. It makes him curious as all hell to know how Lupin had gotten them, but he doesn’t dare ask. Not at this altitude.
“It’s almost curfew,” James says, then. “Can we get on with it?”
Lupin hits him with a blinding, utterly disarming smile. “And here I was, hot to spend the next ten minutes, at least, buttering you up. Well, alright, then, Potter. Pettigrew told you I have a proposition for you.”
Peh-ee-grew toad ewe ah ‘ave ah proposition faw ya.
It’s endearing, is what it is, James finds himself thinking, much to his dismay.
“Something to do with schoolwork, if Peter’s mocking is to be any indicator,” James returns.
“Blimey. I thought all the posh were in Slytherin,” Lupin chuckles to himself. “You sound like a book.” But he pushes on quickly. “I have it on good authority that you are in desperate need of academic assistance. No,” Lupin cuts off James’ protestations before he’s even had the chance to make them, “there’s no point arguing. I heard you tell your pretty friend so yourself. I’m the authority.”
James kicks at the ground, more than a little embarrassed. It’s one thing being chewed out by your Head of House, or being ripped to shreds by Slughorn in front of an entire class. What does his schoolwork have to do with the Durmstrang, though?
“If I promise to get you not only through your seventh year, but an ‘outstanding’ in two of your best subjects, will that be a fair trade for helping me out with your friend, Sirius Black?” Lupin poses.
James frowns deeply. “You want to help me to get in good with Sirius? Not to burst your bubble there, you absolute specimen of human evolution…” That had, in fact, not been at all what James had intended to call him, but it’s out now and James is suddenly the hottest he’s ever been atop this tower. “Alright. Sirius couldn’t give a rat’s arse about my marks. So, if that’s your plan to impress him—”
But Lupin is laughing, his one bicep bulging as he pushes hair out of his face. He looks, to James’ utter shock, embarrassed. Who is this guy? Surely no one can be this good-looking and charming?
“Leave impressing Sirius to me,” he smirks. “What I need from you, Potter, is help with a logistical matter.”