Hogwarts Homerun 01

By Shadow Dragon

If there was one thing Sirius, Remus, Peter, and I shared, it was a love for baseball. The rest of the students shunned us for liking a muggle sport where nobody flew, but we loved it. Before the sun rose, I often found myself being shaken awake by Sirius, dressed in muggle jeans and a muggle T-shirt and ready to play, holding his baseball glove. Peter would still be waking up and Remus would be pulling on a pair of socks. We'd sneak out with my dad's invisibility cloak and hold a game with four members, laughing and talking and playing the whole time. Soon, we had a fully fledged team of Gryffindors playing almost every morning.

I held the worn bat in my hands, feeling the warm handle as I waited for Sirius to lob the ball. He stood completely erect, ball and glove pushed right up against his chest, giving me a mean glare out from under the brim of his cap. Turning his head, he spit and leaned back to throw. The pitch came straight at me and I fell backwards before it could knock me in the side of the head.

"Hey, pitcher!" I shouted, climbing to my feet. "Learn how to throw! Even the Babe couldn't have hit that!"

"Just keeping you on your guard, James!" Sirius called back, laughing and chewing on his gum. Babe Ruth was our idol. Sirius had pictures of him all over the lid of his clothes chest and I had a poster hanging from my bedframe. We could tell you anything about Babe Ruth without having to think about it at all.

"Some guard!" I yelled back, raising the bat from my right shoulder and moving it into position, bouncing it against my shoulder lightly. "Trying to kill me, still?"

"Yeah, well you know how we all hate you," Remus called from his shortstop position. "Just pitch the stupid ball, Sirius!"

Sirius paced the "mound" once, spit, and turned back to me with an evil gleam in his blue eyes. "This is going to hurt," I muttered to myself, digging my toe into the dirt. "Give it to me! Come on!"

"You asked for it," Sirius taunted. He drew his arm back and released the ball. I saw it coming closer, a white comet, and swung the bat. With a loud "CRACK", ball and bat met and ball went flying. The bat fell from my fingers as I sped towards first base, an old textbook, a sense of adrenaline and adventure running through me. A speck of white sped towards Joel, and I threw myself forward, sliding on my belly. The dust stung my eyes, but I distinctively heard myself hit the base.

Thud.

Thwap.

Joel's dark brown glove struck my arm just after it had touched to the base. I stood up, foot on the base, waving my arms triumphantly. "Haha, Sirius! Better luck next time!"

"Loser on first base!" Sirius called back, grinning impudently at me as he caught the ball Joel threw to him.

"Watch out - you have the school joke on the mound!" I called to the team. They all laughed at our normal banter and I ducked into position, ready to cut a quick run to second base. It never came, sadly enough.

"Guys! Breakfast!" Peter shouted at us, pointing at his pocket-watch. He had raised his catcher's mask. "The teachers'll kill us if we're late!"

I snapped my fingers in dismay, but Sirius pointed at me and laughed. "Better luck next time,

Loser!"

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, grinning. "Take this!" I grabbed the ball from Joel and chucked it at him. He ducked and leapt at me.

Seconds later, we found ourselves wrestling. I had an arm wrapped around Sirius's neck, sitting on his back, but he rolled over and tackled me. Half a minute later, we both leapt to our feet, both claiming victory. Remus and Peter, the only ones left, laughed.

"What do we have first today?" Peter asked as we gathered our bags from the sideline of our makeshift field.

"Transfiguration," Remus recited. He was shoulders taller than Sirius and a head taller than Peter and I, taller than even the lanky Professor Flitwick, Sr. The only one in the school that was taller than him was Headmaster Dumbledore. "I hope you all did your homework."

"Of course, of course," Sirius said immediately. He threw an arm around Remus's shoulders and started talking about the wonderful candies that Honeydukes supposedly carried, an attempt to distract Remus. Remus, however, had been along Sirius long enough to know that we were scamming him.

"I'm not letting you borrow my homework," he said stoutly as we all entered. The rest of the houses rolled their eyes as I shook dust out of my hair and moved to sit at the breakfast table. "It's just cheating, Sirius, I can't do it!"

"Relax, buddy!" Sirius told him, laughing. He pulled a scroll out of his pocket, tapping Remus with it. "All done!" It was slightly squished from when he landed on it, but it was okay.

He picked up the milk jug and poured himself a glass.

"Mail should be here in three...two...one..." Peter ticked off. Surely enough, windows flew open and I saw the blur of many wings. One dropped a package of sweets onto Peter's head, but I got a small box as well.

"Oh, good, cookies!" Peter cried gleefully, removing a small package of homemade chocolate chip cookies. As Remus tore through a letter from home, I opened my package. "Oh..."

Sirius glanced over at the awe in my tone and gaped. "They got you a new glove?" he asked, his voice no louder than a whisper.

"It'll take a while to beat in," Peter remarked.

I held the shiny leather glove in my hands, my first new glove, turning it over and over. It was a full-fledged adult-glove. I had been playing with a plastic glove for a couple weeks upon reaching Hogwarts until Sirius had let me borrow one of his old ones. The glove had practically become my glove, but we all knew it was Sirius's, so I never grew really close to it.

"Your first real glove, man!" Sirius cried, pounding me on the back. "This calls for a celebration! I say we..." He stopped abruptly.

"Hey, midget!"

I knew instantly who the voice was by the palpableness of the sneer inside it. Dreading what I would find, I lifted my head, adding just a degree of defiance in the height of my chin. The glove firmly clutched in one hand, I asked, "What do you want, Snape?"

Severus Snape was Sirius's height. He wore loose black robes, while the rest of us just stayed in our muggle baseball playing clothes. His hair, slicked with grease, was always combed and he was always simpering. Today was no exception.

"Did your daddy finally send you a new glove?" he sneered, knocking it out of my hand with a casual flip of his own.

"My uncle sent me this glove, so back off," I snapped, my euphoria in receiving the glove draining away in the light of a new challenge. My fingers found the glove and tightened slightly and unnoticeably about it.

"What do you want?" Sirius growled.

"A game Potter, a simple game," Snape replied smoothly, not bothering to look at Sirius. You see, Severus and I had been friends until coming to Hogwarts, where he picked up the Slytherin mentality against Gryffindors. So he tended to tolerate me a little more than anybody else. He turned to his cronies and grinned, obviously thinking that he was pulling in a sucker. I wasn't going to fall for it.

"What sort of game, Severus?" Remus asked, his eyes narrowed. He gave Snape a piercing look, stabbing him with grey dagger-like eyes.

"You know what sort of game. Baseball," Gerald Goyle sneered into his face. Remus pointedly wiped an invisible speck of dust off of the sleeve of his shirt and stood up.

"Why should we bother?" Sirius asked, rolling his eyes. "We'll beat the pants off of you Slytherins anyway. I think you're getting yourself into a world of hurt."

"Oh, it's not only baseball," Tybalt Crabbe added, rolling his eyes in turn. "Baseball and Quidditch. There'll be a lot of people watching, too. Just to watch you all make fools out of yourselves."

The rest of us, who had never heard Crabbe string together a full sentence, gaped.

Sirius was the first to recover from the shock. His chair scraped loudly as he pushed it across the floor, climbing slowly and deliberately to his feet. Sticking out his hand, he said, "James and I are the captains of our baseball team. We'll give you bums five days to train. It'll be a double hit. Baseball starts with a 'B', for you Slytherins, so it comes before Quidditch, which, in fact, starts with a 'Q'," he added helpfully.

Snape's eyes narrowed. "Your impudence'll one day get you killed, Black," he whispered. Sirius grinned haplessly. "Deal, then. Five days to pull into shape and the match happens on Saturday. We play Quidditch on Sunday afternoon. Normal rules."

"Fair," I agreed, climbing to my own feet. We all shook hands on the deal and wiped them off on our T-shirts or robes. "Now get out of Gryffindor Territory, will you?"

* * *

"Hey, guys, listen up!" I shouted to the Gryffindor Lions, our baseball team. Our last class had let out and we had two hours to play baseball before dinner. Of course, we were using every available minute. "Our first game is on Saturday!"

"First game?" Bobby Rinoa echoed me. A lot of people picked on him because of his American accent, but then he would imitate an English accent and put us all in our places. He was short and blond, a first year with a lot of spunk, as Sirius would have put it.

"First game!" Remus yelled triumphantly. "Against the Slytherins!"

That itself brought a few laughs. "The Slytherins? Baseball?" Aubran Sapling asked, holding his side as he struggled to gasp out the words between roars of laughter. Joel Mamara was on the ground, wheezing, his laughter spent.

"Hey, scruffs, get off the diamond!"

Joel hastily climbed to his feet, wiping away the tears of mirth. Slowly, we turned to see the Slytherins, already adorned in green baseball jerseys and pants, holding gloves and looking formidable. My expression hardened into anger and I glared. Sirius, Peter, Remus, and I stepped forward, backed by the rest of our team.

"We've got full rights to this field right now! We were here first," Sirius growled, holding his fists up. Remus shot him a look.

"We got permission from Professor Kettumn himself," Nott bluffed.

When I look back on it now, I suppose that it was a funny sight. The Slytherins, clean-cut and sophisticated, standing in a group, facing down the Gryffindors, mismatched, indifferent, and almost scruffy. Neither of us refused to yield.

"Get off of the field!" Crabbe ordered.

"We were here first," Sirius repeated, lowering his fists and clenching them in anger. His eyebrows were so low under his eyes that I could barely see the blue in them.

"Yeah, so back off!" Remus agreed, glaring.

Snape walked forward, intending to split the crowd, but I stepped in his way. "Get out of my way, punk!" he snapped, looking annoyed.

"No!" I shouted, crossing my arms over my chest. He was standing a mere foot away from me and I was having to look up to look at his face, but I didn't care about dignity. We had gotten there first, so we got the field. That was the way it was supposed to go and I was NOT going to let some dumb Slytherins change that!

He began walking again, but I shoved him before he could reach me. I don't think he expected practical joker James Potter to be so strong for one so small and that was his mistake. Anyhow, he found himself on the grass, sprawled out. Everybody laughed and the Slytherins growled.

"You'll pay for that, you jerk!" Snape lunged at me and we were both down. My anger at him, welling up after three years at Hogwarts being tormented by him unleashed itself. I heard shouts but ignored them. Snape and I wrestled, banging each other against the ground, punching and kicking and biting, trying to gain the upper hand.

Hands grabbed me around the middle and pried me away from Snape and flung me to the side. I lunged in Snape's direction, but Remus and Sirius grabbed me by the arms and held me back until I calmed down. I had a bloody nose and tears of anger had been flowing down my cheeks, but Snape looked worse. He was being held back by Crabbe and Goyle, looking like he'd gone through a day as a punching bag.

"Boys!" Professor McGonagall, who'd separated us, admonished, looking shocked that we could fight so viciously. "What is going on here?"

"He started it," Snape muttered sullenly, wiping at his own bloody nose.

"It's our field!" I shouted at him, not bothering to deny the fact. "You keep off of it! We were here first!"

"Fighting is absolutely not allowed! You two are to see the headmaster immediately! He shall do with your punishment suitably. Sirius, Remus, escort James to my office. I shall deal with him personally." She swept off, her shoulders tight with anger.

Remus and Sirius exchanged looks of doom. The Slytherins left in a mass, muttering sullenly and glaring with hatred in their faces. The Gryffindors exchanged uneasy looks. "I'll see you later," Bobby tossed at us before heading off.

"We'd better get going. You're in real trouble," Sirius said to me, looking uneasy. "You might want to drop by a bathroom though, to clean that up."

I just nodded and marched towards my doom.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

I stared at Professor McGonagall, my knees weak and my stomach churning. "What?" I asked hoarsely. "Two detentions?" I couldn't believe, no, I wouldn't believe it...

"Yes, Potter, two detentions. 50 points have been deducted from Gryffindor as well. Fighting is strictly against the rules." In her severity, Professor McGonagall looked like a caged lion, ready to roar. I decided that this was not a good time to push my luck. "Now go see Professor Dumbledore."

Slowly, feeling like a crushed warrior, I climbed to my feet, baseball glove in hand. In the light of my punishment, all happiness I felt in it was completely gone. My feet were leaden stones as I trudged across the floor to Professor Dumbledore's office. I had been in there several times on request from Professor Dumbledore himself. "Blood flavored lollipop," I remarked to the massive gargoyle upon reaching it. It tossed me a nod and leapt to the side.

"Ah, Mr. Potter. I just sent Mr. Snape away to Minerva! I understand that you two were fighting?" Professor Dumbledore asked when I reached his office, feet and heart heavy.

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Fighting is absolutely against the rules. But I'm sure Minerva's filled you in quite aptly. Why were you fighting, firstly?"

Professor Dumbledore was missing the normal radiance in his sparkling blue eyes, but I could see it lurking in the edges, restrained and visibly fighting to come out.

"We were on the field first, Professor. We had every right to the field," I defended the Gryffindors.

"I'll admit that you're in the right there. But you weren't fighting over the field. I know that the field, not great as it is, is not that important to you. Why did you fight?" Professor Dumbledore looked at me keenly.

I gulped. "Snape...annoyed me...Professor." Even to my ears, it sounded lame. The disappointed look on Professor Dumbledore's face was like a punch to the stomach. I hate it when adults guilt you because you screwed up.

"You and Severus used to be friends, correct? Before Hogwarts?" There was that keen observing look again.

"Yes, we were," I said shortly, not wanting to talk about that subject. "Then he became a Slytherin. He snubbed me every time I went near him."

"The day when being different tears two friends apart completely grieves me." Professor Dumbledore stood up and tapped the surface to the desk with his long, spindly fingers, as if pondering something.

He turned to me and looked at me in bemusement for a few seconds before saying, "Yes, I found out what I wanted to know, James. You may go." He didn't look like he would listen to anything, so I decided not to try to protest anything and left quietly, my footsteps silent on the thick carpeting. As I stepped around the massive gargoyle, hands grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me into an alcove.

Sirius, Remus, and Peter all stared at me with scared, hollow eyes. Sirius had a smudge of dirt along his cheek, making him look roughish. "Are you in trouble?" he asked, letting go of my shirt and backing up a step to give me some space. I supposed that I looked terrible. My face stung and my clothing was covered in dirt.

"Yeah," I replied. "McGonagall's not too thrilled with me."

"D'you think this'll mean that we can't go to the states this summer?" Peter asked nervously, plucking at the sleeve of his muggle shirt. Every summer, the four of us went to the United States, which was where we all found out about baseball. Bobby Rinoa's family owned some land there and he normally went with us. My parents took us to Boston, Washington DC, and New York City to see the Muggles behaviors and visit new wizarding communities for Dad's job. When Sirius and I and

Severus went back when we were eight, we all three fell in love with baseball. But Severus joined Slytherin and grew quickly to detest the sport that he had been obsessed with. He'd been an awesome hitter, better than Sirius or I. I was the best pitcher, Sirius an unstoppable person with catching the ball, and Severus a great hitter.

"I don't think it'll cost us the trip," Remus replied sensibly. "I mean, Sirius has been in more fights than we can count and he still goes. This is James's first, after all."

Sirius nodded. "Though you might want to go see Ms. Pomfrey about all that..."

"It's Madam Pomfrey," Peter corrected instantly. Sirius, who had incorrectly said her name just to spite Peter, grinned. We started to walk, surprising a couple of first-years as we exited the alcove. "So, what did Dumbledore want?"

"He asked me about my years before Hogwarts," I said uncomfortably. I twitched my left shoulder and Sirius got the message.

"That was so awesome the way you took down Severus. He didn't know what hit him!" Sirius congratulated me, driving the subject away. Within moments of talking about the fight, the subject was long-gone.

***

"Safe!"

Sirius jumped up from home plate, striking the air with a triumphant fist. "Ha!" he shouted at me, standing on pitcher's mound with an air of slight defeat. "Didn't get it there fast enough, buddy!"

"I'm aware of that!"

Sirius grabbed his glove and trotted out to the outfield, switching places with Aubran, who was up to bat. We were short an outfielder because Sirius normally played third base and Adrien was on third base and Aubran was up to bat. He raised the bat over his shoulder and gave me a stare with weird aqua-blue eyes. His blond hair lay flat against his scalp and his pale skin, splattered with a few freckles on his face, burned easily.

"Let's actually hit it this time!" Ketumn, his twin brother, shouted, smacking his hand into his glove. The two looked nothing alike. Aubran was taller, with broader shoulders, but Ketumn had burnished brown hair that curled slightly at his temples and clear blue eyes. He had no freckles, but his skin didn't burn so easily. (A/N to Autumn: don't kill me for this, please, I was just out of names!!)

"Yeah, c'mon!" Bobby shouted, relying heavily on his American accent. "We haven't got all day! Pitch the ball!"

I leaned back and let Aubran have it. Eyes narrowed, he swung the bat and...

"Strike One!"

"C'mon, Aubran, it's on a baseball! You can hit this!" Ketumn taunted as I caught the ball. It was an ongoing thing between the twins to pick on each other.

Aubran moved heavily into the swing as I pitched it a second time and sent it rocketing away. Ketumn snapped his fingers in disappointment and moved to block the base path between second and third. He was second baseman, so he and Remus talked a lot during the game. Aubran shoved right through him, but he shoved back.

"Come on, guys, break it up!" Remus shouted, throwing himself between the two of them. They were both shorter than he was, so he put a hand on each of their foreheads and held both of them away from him at arms length. Remus looked annoyed at them, but we all started laughing.

"Let's get back to playing!" Peter shouted, trying to get our attention. But we were all too busy laughing at the twins to pay attention to him, so he pulled his mask over his face with a sigh and squatted back into position. Eventually, Remus took his place at the plate and gave me an intense stare that was intended to intimidate me. It didn't.

"Give me your hardest, James!" he shouted.

"What do you think?" I called to Sirius. "Think I should give it to him soft?"

Sirius shrugged. "Sure, why not?" We both grinned at Remus, who rolled his eyes at us and twitched the bat. After I had moved my shoulder so that it was loose again, I reeled back and let it fly. Remus missed. "Strike One!"

"I'd like to see if the wolf-boy can hit the ball," a voice sneered. "That is what you're named after, isn't it, Romulus?"

Remus gritted his teeth again, trying desperately to ignore Snape. His twin brother, Romulus, had died when he was eight, killed by the same werewolf that turned Remus into a monster himself, and Remus missed him dreadfully. Snape had no idea that Remus was a werewolf; in turn, he had no idea that we were all becoming Animagi to help our friend out. When we weren't playing baseball, we were reading, researching, and mixing potions for the full draft. Peter was catching on very slowly.

"Come on, Romulus, hit the ball!"

Snape was standing maybe five feet behind Peter, sneering with all his might and trying to get Remus to turn and beat his face in. Remus, with his lanky form, really wouldn't have had any trouble, but, being the pacifist that he was, I knew that he wouldn't. Snape did, too, and used it to his advantage.

"Pitch the ball, James," Sirius hissed to me. "Go high, over Peter's head. Smash Snape's face with it. You're good enough to do that, right?"

I nodded barely perceptibly and prepared to throw the ball again.

I was fully intending to throw the ball to Peter for Remus to hit, but I think Sirius had already guessed that and had a backup plan in mind for it. As I let the pitch loose, he whipped out his wand and shouted something. Instants later, a rubber chicken shot through the air and smacked Snape straight in the face. Snape stood there, a shocked look on his face as the chicken fell to his feet, thunking lightly against the ground. The sound, however, was masked by every Gryffindor on the field.

I froze. Severus Snape, my one-time friend, turned to me and looked at me with a mixture of pity, a plea for help, and disgust in me. It clearly told me that he was ashamed of the prank that I'd helped pull on him. Then the look was gone, as quickly as it had come. "Okay, Gryffindogs, this means war," I heard Snape whisper before he calmly turned and walked off, fueled by the harsh laughter I kept thinking about when it had been Snape, Sirius, and I. We would have pulled that prank a million times.

I just didn't like to see one of the original trio on the receiving end of it.

I didn't like it at all.

***

"James, I've got bad news."

I was hunched double over my Potions essay, working furiously on it. The situation with Severus Snape, Sirius Black, and James Potter was bothering me more than I would have liked to admit. My playing during Quidditch practice had been seriously bad because I was brooding over that problem.

Sirius was showing Peter a passage he had found out of Hogwarts, so I had time to brood in private. Remus had been in our dormitory, working on his homework, but now he was out in the Common Room with bad news.

"What is it?" I asked, rolling the essay up. People kept claiming that I was pretty smart, but I just retained knowledge easier. If I paid attention in class, passing the test was not a problem.

"Friday starts the full moon," Remus said in a low voice, looking around as he sat down. He brushed his long bangs out of his eyes and looked at me. "I'm going to have to miss the baseball and Quidditch games."

"What?" I asked in horror. "We've got just enough players to play the full game!"

"I know, but I've gotta go to the Shrieking Shack! I can't not go. That'd be disastrous!" Remus's eyes were wide with disappointment and frustration with his werewolf problem.

"It's okay, we've got three days, I'm sure we'll find somebody," I said, just to console myself. Inwardly, I was in shock. Who were we going to use? There were no Gryffindor boys left! We couldn't ask any of the brains, Ravenclaw, to join in! Half of them didn't even know what the word baseball meant!

But Remus' problem still couldn't shove the regrets I was having about giving up my friendship with Severus away, no matter if it was he that ended the friendship in the first place. For the first time in my years at Hogwarts, I was feeling like scum.

"Listen, I've gotta go tell Sirius," Remus told me, jerking his thumb in the direction that Sirius and Peter were in. "You'd better get that essay done."

"I will, I will," I replied, hiding my eyes as I unrolled the parchment again and got back to writing. Later that night, when I fell asleep, the look Severus had given me after being hit in the face with a rubber chicken haunted my dreams.

***

"Who are we going to find? The game's tomorrow!" Sirius said as the team met around the pitcher's mound for our final practice. His blue eyes were wide with worry.

"I don't know, I'm trying to think!" I said, grabbing at my hair.

Bobby Rinoa came in with "We could always ask a Hufflepuff. They're pretty good at this stuff."

"They wouldn't know the word baseball if we told them what it meant!" Sirius replied, rolling his eyes.

"I hear you're all looking for a new player. Care if I try out?" came a soft soprano voice from all of us.

I turned slowly to see the redhead that had simply come to have herself known as Lily. She refused to go by her last name for some strange reason, so we all ended up forgetting it. She was wearing muggle clothing and holding a worn baseball glove in her hand. "One moment," Aubran Sapling said hastily and we all pulled back into our huddle.

"What do you think? Should we let her play?" I asked, looking around.

"She's a girl, James," Sirius hissed.

"Sirius, are you or are you not thirteen years old?" Remus asked, rolling his eyes with a manner of annoyance about him.

"I am."

"Then act your age!" Remus replied sharply. Sirius didn't say anything back.

After a few seconds of debating, we came up with an answer. "Tell you what," I said, turning to Lily. "We'll give you a trial round."

In the half hour that passed, Lily wiped clean every thought of girls playing baseball that Sirius had ever had. She scooped up the ball when hit to her and flung it at me with the might of a steel hammer. Half of the time, it hurt my glove hand. And she knocked a home run instantly when it was her turn up to bat. Within instants, she was a favorite on the team.

"What do you say? Am I on?" Lily asked as we all trotted off the field, feeling the strange euphoria that came along with a faith in a new astounding teammate.

Sirius was not going to admit the error in his comments, so I just nodded to save his dignity. Fortunately, Lily was very discreet and said nothing to him about it. However, she approached me on one subject that I didn't want to talk about.

"James, all this week you've been ... well, lost in all the classes. What's bothering you? You never drift off in Transfiguration!"

Lily looked at me, her green eyes plainly worried. I blinked. Nobody was that perceptive. But then I remembered who Lily was. She was top of the class and very popular because she was said to actually care about the people around her.

"It's nothing," I said, my voice suddenly gruff. "Nothing at all. Or, at least, nothing that I want to talk about."

Unlike anybody else, Lily didn't press me to find an answer out of me. She just shrugged and said, "Okay, but if you ever want to talk, I'll listen."

And in those simple words, Lily had somehow managed to pry herself into my life.

She came with Sirius, Peter, and I to wave Remus off, not knowing about his secret and thinking it was just to see his sick mother. Sirius wasn't too fond of her at first but she grew on him the way she did on all people. Soon, we all found ourselves discussing on how bad we were going to beat the Slytherins. Lily just seemed to meld completely into our group, though she left a bit earlier to go meet up with a few friends. When I went to bed that night, I had a whole new set of emotions crushing me. And I couldn't get Severus' haunted face out of my mind.

***