Return Of The Lion ((Julius))

[Colin Morgensen G7]

Colin sighed, tapping the excess ink off the end of his quill idly. It wasn’t that he disliked Potions classes or the homework he had to complete, though he did despise every moment when Bradley or Santiago or Angel (never Katie, of course, because Ravenclaws loved homework more than anything) weren’t trying to sidetrack him; quite the contrary. Uncle Richard had introduced him to the world of mixing ingredients to create something with more power and meaning than mere blades of grass or cut-off ends of plants. It was just...his attention span wasn’t always the greatest. That was why Bradley could always distract him so easily. Colin always got mostly everything done, except for the things he didn’t, but he actually worked harder when pretending to not pay any attention to Bradley whatsoever. It was entertaining; Colin would swear that his friend even pouted sulkily after a while. Bradley would never completely outgrow the prat within.

He had waited long enough for the other four to put in an appearance, Colin decided eventually. Santiago was probably off in a broom closet with Angel somewhere, or up on the Astronomy Tower or wherever it wade that the two of them snuck away to have their private moments. Colin had never inquired and neither did he ever intend to. The other two Gryffindors were his friends, certainly, but there were some things that he simply did not ever need to know. Katie was...who knew where with, well, who knew who. Bradley, Colin knew for certain, was in class. They had compared timetables at the start of the year, only to come to the miserable conclusion that, in Bradley’s phrasing, Colin took ‘weird’ classes. Personally, Colin reckoned that Bradley took the easy classes, but only if they were the ones that Colin didn’t share with him. Anyway, regardless of who took what and what others thought of that decision, clearly no one was coming and Colin wasn’t going to wait forever when there was a ray of sunshine outside. One of them would hunt him down if he was needed. He wasn’t exactly hard to spot.

His feet traced the familiar path from the Gryffindor common room to the entrance hall to the courtyard as effortlessly as if the route had been hollowed into the ground. Sitting in the courtyard was just something that he tended to do whenever he had a bit of free time; it was a nice place to sit quietly and think. Taking a seat on one of the benches, Colin spread his parchment and textbooks out over the seat, tucking one quill behind his ear as if it would help him to think. The questions weren’t hard, not with the childhood education he had received from Richard, and Colin didn’t bother taking his time, simply racing through the homework as quickly as he could without checking his answers or bothering to make his handwriting anything more legible than a spiky scrawl.

The homework hadn’t taken him as long as he had thought it would, and there was still no sign of his friends appearing any time soon. No Bradley, no Santiago, no Katie, no Angel. Life was suddenly promising to be as boring as possible. There was, however, someone approaching. Colin squinted at the figure doubtfully, both eyebrows rising sceptically. “Oi!” Leaving his bag draped carelessly over the bench, Colin jogged over to the ex-Gryffindor, stopping a few feet away and grinning widely. “What on earth are you doing here, Lionheart? Have you come to see whether the Quidditch team is still surviving in your absence or something? Or did you just miss Hogwarts that much?” Perhaps there was some intrigue to be found after all.

[Julius Lionheart]

' Never thought I'd see the day that I wanted to skive quidditch practice!', thought Julius. He was still lying in bed at half-past ten stark naked and sore all over. Yesterday had been one oif the most grueling practices that he had ever taken part in. Now he was silently praying that todays practice would be cancelled. He wouldn't be so bad off if he had not thrown that party last night. Even though he had scored with one of the teams groupies, it had been over all a bad idea. Shaking his pounding head, he sat up.

Looking around, he still couldn't quite grasp the fact that he was living on his own, sort of. He was in his newly aquired mansion-like home. Well, you could say aquired, more like bequeathed upon. His grandmother had given him the house upon his graduation. It was much to large for one person, which he had fixed by inviting a few of his teammates, who weren't as well of, to be his roommates. When you say too large, you really mean it. It was a eight bedroom, eleven bath wonder of the world. It was located in Buxton, which was a nice town to live in. Smiling to himself, he swung his legs out and stood up.

' First things first,' he thought,' I need to find some boxers.' Looking around, he walked over to his dresser, opened the top drawer and withdrew a pair of wrinkled up boxers. Putting them on, walked out his room and headed for the kitchen. As he walked through the house, he saw that only one other person was awake in the house, out of it's four rersidents. It was his fellow Chaser, Lilian Corvinus. She was decked out in pajamas and had the carton of orange juice already out. Grinning, he walked over and picked up the carton. Taking off the cap, he drank straight from the carton, which brought an " Ugh!" sound from Lili. " Good morning to you too milady." he said with a wink. She stuck her tongue out at him and told him that the captain had cancelled practice today, something to do with her having to meet with an opposing team. Silently thankful, Julius took the carton from his lips and said " Good, I know what I'm doing today." Without another word, he went back to his room and got dressed in some muggle attire.

Once dressed, Julius apparated to Hogsmeade. It was spur of the moment, after all, not many students returned to visit the school so quickly, yet visiting Hogwarts had popped into his head like a stroke of inspiration. Walking the familiar trail up to the school, Julius grinned. The only thing that would make this better would be a parade.

Reaching the school, he was silently amused to see that Filch was at the entrance way, already aware of Julius' presence. Before Filch could say anything, Julius said, " Don't worry, just visiting." Hurrying past him, he wound his way through the school, stopping occasionally to chat with some of his younger friends. It was in the courtyard however that he ran into a fellow Gryffindor who was only a year younger than Julius himself, seventh year Colin Morgensen. He smiled in recognition as the younger man approached him. He laughed out loud at the questions and replied, " Nah man, I'm just visiting friends, I have the rare day off today and figured I should see somebody other than my teammates, although the groupies aren't half bad." He said that last bit with a mishievous grin. Continuing, he spoke " Actually, sinced you mentioned it, how is the quidditch team doing? If you regale me with tale of the season, I'll awe you with the life of a super star."

[Colin Morgensen G7]

The life of a superstar? Colin had private doubts about the accuracy of that arrogant statement. He was hardly an expert or anything, but could anyone become a superstar in any area of life so soon after graduating from Hogwarts? He could barely even recall that Julius had ever been on the Gryffindor Quidditch team; if Colin had not been forced to accompany Bradley to some of the practices and pulled along by Katie and Angel to watch the games then Colin wasn’t really sure he would even know the names of any Quidditch players in the Hogwarts teams. It just wasn’t his sort of game. There were too many injuries for his taste, and Colin didn’t solely mean for the players although Bradley had suffered more than enough damage to have Angel on the verge of apoplexy. Every single bloody time the prat came too close to a Bludger, Colin swore that Katie’s nails pierced through the skin covering his arm. He wasn’t really much better in terms of reaction, though he would never tell Bradley that. Rationally he knew that Bradley could take care of himself and that no lasting harm could come to his best friend but there was still that moment of abject fear before Bradley either dodged the Bludger or shrugged it off as a minor blow.

“The team is doing pretty well, I think,” Colin answered after taking a moment to think back over the last few matches, both for Gryffindor and the other three Houses to compare them. In all honesty, Colin rarely paid attention to the matches except to tune out Katie’s and Angel’s rabid yelling. Though, to be fair, Katie was too refined to be rabid in anything and Angel was too demure to really yell. So, really, he just tried to ignore both girls and focus on willing Bradley not to be injured. He wasn’t really a Quidditch aficionado. “We’ve won some, lost some; can’t win them all, right? Bradley always says something along the lines of losing not being a problem as long as the team doesn’t lose to Slytherin. Something like that anyway. I don’t always listen.” Colin shrugged and grinned light-heartedly. He might be infected by transmittable prat viruses if he listened to Bradley for too long, or so he always teased his friend. Whatever he said didn’t change the fact that he always had time to listen to his friend’s ramblings, complaints and inner thoughts. The two of them had come a long way from squabbling like children during their first year in the school.

It took a while, with many stops and starts and pauses, but Colin eventually stumbled through a more complete summary of the Quidditch games of the year so far. Of course he had attended every Gryffindor game that had taken place – either both Katie and Angel ordered him to go or Colin went somewhat willingly to watch his best friend playing – but Bradley had also persuaded, or dragged, him to observe the other games. As a result, he was quite well informed about the games though it took him a little while to remember what had happened during them since, well, Quidditch games were hardly his priority. At any rate, the team had managed to survive quite well without Julius playing. “So what about your fantastic life as a Quidditch star? What team did you join anyway?” Colin’s mouth lifted into a crooked smile, shrugging his shoulders ruefully. He had never claimed to remember everything that he had ever heard, not to mention that he wasn’t entirely certain he had ever known which team Julius had been recruited by. “Is it really different to when you were playing for Gryffindor? Other than being paid and having groupies, of course. I don’t recall anyone having such fervent supporters after a Quidditch match.”