234Thank you for the encouraging reviews! A quick note on James and his friends-as the story continues, their characters will develop. If oyu see a mix of the maradaurs in them, I did it on purpose. James is very much like his grandfather, Ben is a muggle-born but with the charm, attitude and loyalty of Sirius. Emma is the Lupin of the group with being friends with trouble makers, yet she is from a situation identical to Sirius and finds family and love in the Potters much like Harry did with the Weasleys. I just felt that I wanted to expain it so you can imagine them as vividly as the canon characters! Enjoy this chapter!
Chapter 2: Oh The Tangled Web We Weave
"Hogsmeade, hogsmeade, hoggy-hoggy-hogsmeade, entertain us please!" Ben began to sing his own redition of the school song, changing it to be about their day's activities. It was the last Hogsmeade trip before the holiday break and students were ready to do their Christmas shopping and enjoy the town.
"Are you sure I can't go?" Hugo asked his sister. "Lily and I wouldn't even make a difference, we're small!"
"I'm sorry Hugo, but you'll just have to stay around the castle." Rose told him. "You'll be able to go next year."
"If you get your permission slip signed," James cracked a grin at Hugo and Lily. "Al almost forgot his last year."
"I did not!" Albus defended. "You told me you had mine in your rucksack and then when we got all the way to King's Cross, you said you forgot it! You're lucky Dad had enough time to Apparate to get it and give it to me before the train left."
"Ah but Al, I was unlucky in the event that Mum was furious at me and threatened to break my broom in half if I did that again. Crazy ginger," James muttered.
"Hey!" Lily, Rose and Hugo said.
"Aw you know I just meant mum and her temper," James defended. "Anyway Lils, I'll get ya some candy from Honeydukes to hold you over til you're old enough." Lily's face brightened.
"You spoil her too much." Ben said as he, James and Emma left Hogsmeade where James had spent a galleon on sweets for his sister.
"Nah mate, my dad and I have it all figured out; if we treat Lily better than anyone else then she's never going to think that any bloke is good enough for her. Thus we won't have to hex anyone for snogging her." Emma laughed at his logic.
"James, she is going to have a boyfriend sooner or later and if you hex him it'll just make her angry. What was that about the 'ginger temper'?" James frowned as they kept walking.
"Where to next? Fancy a visit to the Shrieking Shack? Or will you cry again Emma?"
"Ha I remember that day! Our first visit to Hogsmeade!" Ben said excitedly.
"It wasn't funny!" Emma said, as the wind whipped her blonde barrel curls into her face. She tried to control them and scold the boys simultaneously. "First we sneak off to someplace totally off-limits then James tells me all these creepy stories about how spirits haunt it and then Ben jumps out and grabs me! It was a nightmare!" James and Ben howled with laughter at the memory.
"Sorry, but your face was priceless." James said.
"Whatever," Emma huffed.
"Aw c'mon Emmy." Ben said, giving her his best puppy-dog lip. "You can't be mad at the dynamic duo. It's in our nature to prank the innocent,"
"We truly cannot help ourselves." James said, putting his arm around Emma's shoulder as Ben did the same on the other side. "You know we'd be lost without you"
"By lost you mean you would have no homework to copy or someone to deflate your insane egos" Emma teased.
"See, you get it." Ben smirked and James laughed.
"Can this class be ANY longer?" James whispered to Emma. The Gryffindor fifth years were stuck in Monday morning History of Magic and Professor Binns was droning on about wizarding families and the inter-relations.
"I think we only have a few more minutes. Better wake Ben," She said, motioning to Ben's sleeping figure. James pointed his wand at Ben and suddenly a teacup full of cold water dumped on his face.
"OI!" He said loudly, his head shooting up. The class snickered while Professor Binns, who noticed nothing, continued to ramble. Ben whipped his head to look at James.
"You forget that I know where you sleep." He said, attempting to make it sound dark but his smile gave it away. That was the thing about Ben- as hard as he tried to be serious, he always had a mischievous glint in his eye and the corner of his lips were always turned upright.
"And your homework that I would like by next class, is to make a Wizarding family tree dating back at least three generations, including your own. Who knows, maybe some of you are related." The class wasn't sure if that last part was an attempt at humor for the ghost went back through the blackboard after giving them the assignment. James was furious.
"Mine's gonna take AGES." He groaned. "And I have Quidditch! I need to work the team so we can come back strong after the break!"
"That's payback for the water then," Ben said smugly. "All I have to do is write my name on the paper. That is my Wizarding Family Tree." Emma chuckled at James' pout.
"I'll help you James, my parents were both only children, mine will be easy."
"You're a lifesaver Em."
"Okay." Emily said as she looked at the long piece of parchment James had prepared for her. "Let's start with the Potter side of you." James positioned the quill to the right side of the paper.
"Well I have my granddad, James Potter." He said, writing his name down. "And he married Lily Evans." He scribbled her name next to it with a double line. "And they had my dad, Harry." He drew a vertical line from the double line and wrote his father's name."
"Easy enough. Now the Weasley side." Emma said and she heard James exhale and position his pen on the left side.
"Well there's my granddad Arthur Weasley. And he married Molly Prewett who had two twin brothers Gideon and Fabian but they died before they could reproduce, thank Merlin." James said, writing their names as Emma gave him an astonished look. "C'mon I didn't mean it like that! I just meant that then I'd have even more family to know." Emma shook her head.
"Anyway, the Weasley's had seven children," she started and James got back to his map.
"Yeah. Bill, who married Fleur Delacour and had Victorie, Dominique and Louis. And then they had Charlie, but he says he's too busy with dragons to settle down. Reckon grandmum worries. Anyway, then there was Percy who married that Audrey chick that I can't STAND-"
"She's perfectly nice!" Emma said, recalling when she met her last Christmas. "A little dry maybe,"
"She was a Ravenclaw." James said pointedly. "We were all worried this year when little Molly came to Hogwarts that she would be sorted there. But she's a Gryffindor. Now we just gotta wait next year for Lucy to come and be sorted and then we'll be all squared away. Anyhow, who was born next-Oh." He said quietly and he wrote Fred Weasley's name down, followed by 'died 1997'. Emma rubbed his arm.
"It's okay to miss him." She said.
"But I never even met him." James rationed.
"It's still okay." James smiled at her. Somehow, level-headed and clear-minded Emma always knew the right thing to say.
"So then there's Uncle George who married Angelina Johnson and they had Fred and Roxanne. Then Ron who married Hermione Granger and had Rose and Hugo. Then Ginny," he said, writing his mother's name and drawing the double bond that connected it to Harry's name. "And then they were blessed with have a bouncing baby boy by the name of James Sirius Potter." Emma rolled her eyes as James embellished his name on the parchment. "Then they tried to see if they could somehow once again reach perfection with procreating and found themselves with Albus and Lily." He put down his quill and looked at the parchment, frowning. "Teddy's name should be on here."
"How about you put him up with Victorie?" Emma offered, knowing how important it was to the Potters that Teddy was always considered part of the family. "Binns won't know the difference if they're engaged or married." James nodded and scribbled him in.
"Weird." He said, looking at the tree once again. "There's a bunch of kids on here named after dead people."
"Better than being named after a man like I am." Emma sighed. James looked at her.
"You're named after a man?!"
"My mum's father was Emerson Prince." She said. "My parents were planning on naming their first son Emerson but then they had my two older sisters. Then when I was a girl, they knew they didn't want any more kids so they just called me Emma. My sisters always told me it was plain compared to their names, Aphaea and Salacia." She said her older sisters' names with disgust. They had both left Hogwarts and went on to marry pureblood Slytherins like themselves.
"So you were named after a man AND a Slytherin?" James asked her, in mock-horror. "I think I'm going to need some time to process this." He started inching his chair away from her and Emma lightly shoved him.
"Better than being named after troublemakers you won't live up to." She said, sticking her tongue out at him.
"Oh I'm living up to them." James said confidently, leaning back on his chair. "You should hear my mum flip out on my dad for telling me the stories of what his dad and godfather did at school. She reckons he's feeding into my wild side." Emma shook her head and poked her wand at his tilting chair, causing it to topple backwards.
Next: Can James and Ben stay out of trouble? I think not :)