Right, so, this turned out a bit more dramatic than I thought it would. Maybe it's because it's 3:30am and I'm actually a little bit crazy right now. But I'm crazy all the time so, however you want to take that.

I've actually been working on another story, and then this came up, spur of the moment, and I began to really like the idea. So now, what was supposed to be a very long one-shot has been cut, sliced, diced and will be cooked into a bigger feast for you all. Huzzah! How much bigger? Only the timer will tell. For now, enjoy the appetizer and I apologize in advance for the mistakes.

Disclaimer: What you already know isn't mine, what you don't know, is.

Animagus Instinct

Lily Evans was furious.

She was furious because she wasn't as good in Transfiguration as she wanted to be.

She was furious because she didn't even want to be here in the first place.

She was furious because she now, against her every will, is seeking aid from the insufferable, bigheaded James Potter, from whom she will never hear the end of this.

Lily Evans was furious that she had been coaxed into becoming an illegal animagus when she could've been reading Hogwarts, A History for the 8th (okay! 11th…) time. And now with James Potter explicitly involved and with her confidence and pride slipping a little further away with each failed wave of her wand, she self-conflictingly couldn't bring herself to back out.

Had things been put in Artemis Charles' words, she would've said that her best friend was simply being too proud and a big baby about showing the slightest vulnerability to anyone, and that this was ironic because what's more vulnerable than a baby – that is, disregarding baby Acromantulas - ? Nonetheless, Artemis Charles was glad that Lily Evans was so predictably Lily Evans, because then, they wouldn't be best friends and she never would've been able to entrap Lily in aforementioned situation! Ha ha!

It is most fortunate that not everything put into Artemis Charles' words makes it out of her mouth, for Lily Evans' answer would've warned her to use the term 'best friend' very loosely and to watch her back at night for said baby acromantula. Acromantuli? Either way, Lily found it very inconvenient to have such an evil best friend.

Artemis also thought it was very inconvenient to have such an evil friend, and found that Lily's last statement was slightly unfair as she had never personally threatened Lily with baby acromantula and such.

But who cared at this point? Artemis was having a ball! Then a candle! Then a teddy bear! Then a chair!

"Whoa, Charlie!" exclaimed the one and only Sirius Black as he sat his tall figure on her chair to prevent her from Transfiguring it any further. His mouth was full of chewed sunflower seeds and yet, he still managed to pull off his Black Charm. And for this, he was also insufferable. "You got it – we got it."

She noticed he nicknamed her surname. Geez, people were calling her anything nowadays; Charlie, Artie-boy, Bumbaclut; what was up with that?

"You're getting smoother with your transitions, more details with ease, and non-verbal casting no less!" noted a sandy haired boy, giving her a kind, encouraging smile. "You're doing great. One step closer to Animagi-dom"

Artemis would've gushed out a "Thanks Remus," in an attempted cool manner, when Sirius quickly interjected:

"Tut tut! Don't give her all the credit. You know what they say: 10 student, 90 badass teacher." He cockily leaned back on the hind legs of the chair.

Artemis didn't know why Sirius was saying this; Remus was a far better teacher than he ever was, and that was even disregarding the fact that he kept trying to spit sunflower seeds in her hair the whole time. She kicked the chair back and sent him sprawling in the floor, sunflower seeds sailing mercilessly everywhere.

"Argh! You demon!" Sirius shouted, pointing a dramatic finger at Artemis from the floor. Then, ignoring his own bodily harm for the sake of wasted food, he began eating them off the floor. Even Remus thought this was disgusting, as the hidden classroom they were using had been neglected for quite some time. The desks were all stacked at the very back of the room, some of them draped by an ominous purple curtain, and the adjacent wall was actually a giant window, giving plenty of light and opportunity for the room to show off its layers of dust. The only things that were clean were the desk and chairs the kids were using, and the kids themselves, though some of the latter were very questionable.

Remus and Artemis stared in revolt ("That's disgusting.") as Sirius crawled around for the seeds, but Peter jumped at this opportunity; Sirius never shared food. He claimed that he was a growing boy, and sharing food would mean sabotaging his manliness.

"Oi, Pete!" coughed Sirius, "Don't you dare eat my seeds!! Merlin! I can't breathe!"

"It's because you're eating DUST." Artemis said blandly, not really caring if he'd need to go to the Hospital wing after, but really not wanting to watch him go through the process either.

"Good grief, neither of you should be eating this off the ground anyway! Just get more from the Kitchens!" said Remus, but only in vain because soon it turned into a competition of who can shove the most dirty seeds into their mouths. And after much crawling, wrestling, tears and heartache, poor Peter ended up pinned down with Sirius sitting on his back, pulling his forehead backwards to prevent him from getting the last few seeds that were but a few inches away from his mouth. It was like a ferocious Viking war, as Sirius did a wild battle cry and pulled Peter's head back further. Peter's neck skin couldn't stretch that far, and so, due to human structure, the wet sunflower seeds came spewing out of his mouth, onto the dirty floor and the last few seeds were lost in the pile.

"Muahahahahaha!!! If I can't have them, NO ONE CAN HAVE THEM!!" said Sirius in an accent that didn't really exist. He was still sitting on Peter's back with odd angles protruding from his cheeks, cackling up spit, tyranny, and sunflower bits.

Remus sighed. This was very much predictable of Sirius. "Sirius, get off Peter."

"Never! I'm marking my territory!"

"That would mean you'd have to pee on him."

Peter widened his eyes, which began to water. Who knew how far Black would go…

"At least let go of his forehead. He can't even close his mouth, for Pete's sake!" said Remus almost lazily.

Sirius laughed an obvious obnoxious laugh for an obvious lame pun, and Remus couldn't help but think that his friend looked like a drunken mutated baby. Then he quickly ran up behind Sirius and slapped both of his cheeks together so that all of his sunflower seeds came spewing out. Unfortunately, Remeus forgot that Peter was underneath Sirius, and moreover, that his mouth was still open, and that seeds glazed with Sirius' spit would fall into his mouth and begin choking him when he was already having problems breathing with all that weight on his back.

"MOONYYY! You moon buffoon of a baboon loon!" whined Sirius. He went to lunge at Remeus when suddenly; he got hit square in the chest with a bat boogey hex.

Completely speechless, everyone – even Peter, who was mysteriously chewing on something now – turned to see where the hex came from.

Alas, eight feet away were Lily Evans and James Potter, arguing more fiercely than they ever were.

"Just admit you need my help!" James' jet black hair was messier than ever.

"Why don't you admit that you're a conceited PRICK! Go inflate your head elsewhere! Obviously the thought of trying to deflate it might overwork that pathetic excuse of a brain of yours and burst your precious ego!" Lily bellowed back, making his 5'11 advantage useless against her 5'4 rage.

"My 'pathetic excuse of a brain'? Coming from the prefect who can't transfigure a Teddy bear into a chair?"

And that was it – the nerve you don't touch with Lily Evans.

And James Potter had realized it too late.

"Lily, I didn't mean to-"

"Right. You're right, I can't do it. So that makes you better than me, huh?" Lily was turning redder by the second.

"Lily, I was just frustr-"

"What, should I get down and kneel before you? Are you going to bully me in the hallways now? Hm? Hex me for kicks because you think you're better than me so you're entitled to do whatever you'd like?" She was trembling with anger.

"Lily. Calm down, I didn't mean that." James was getting more frustrated than calm.

"Well, I mean what I'm saying here: You, Potter, are better than no one. You are nothing but a spoiled brat, doing whatever the hell you feel like doing, with no respect for others. Putting yourself on a pedestal and alienating others that you don't deem 'worthy'. Who are you to decide who's bleeding worthy or not? What are you are you trying to play God or something? You're exactly like those Slytherins; deluded. Except the cause you're fighting for is your own ego, and I can't even tell which one's worse."

It was appalling. It was shocking. Even babbling Sirius, who was innocently covered in bat boogey and boils that ached, was struck. But then he became infuriated: What was the bitch talking about? She didn't know a single bit of truth about his best friend, and more so, she's never even tried. Sirius went to defend the infuriated James but felt the cold freeze of the Silencing charm in his throat. Artemis walked in front of him with her wand pointed in a warning manner and an expression that said "Don't you dare". Sirius looked to James to see what he would say, to see whether he even had to fight Artemis, but Lily had already hitched her bag and left James standing in front of an empty space.

Sirius charged for the door and for Lily, but was once again stopped by Artemis, this time by her hands which grabbed his arms in a plea.

"Sirius, please, stop. You're not going to make things better. I know Lily. I know James isn't that person. I'll talk to her, just please don't make things more difficult than they already are."

She used his hesitation to push him a few steps backwards away from the door. Seeing that he was cooperating, she took the charm off his and cleaned him off (she had learned to fix up the bat boogey hex really well as result of being Lily's friend). He turned back to James, who was sitting down with his head in his hands.

"Fuck, man. Are you alright? She's just a bitch."

"She's not a bitch" warned James. Artemis also threw him a dirty look. "I just, I can't believe that she sees me like that. Does she really think that I'm just as bad as those Slytherins? Those guys who practice sanguism and the Dark Arts? I'm against those guys. I'm fighting against them; for her. I don't want them to hurt her. Why is it that she always thinks that I think about me all the time? Do I? Is that what I talk about all the time? Me? And you guys just play along with it?"

"James, listen to me," Artemis went to rest her head on his lap and looked up at his face, "she doesn't think that about you at all. She was just incredibly frustrated. You know how she gets when she doesn't succeed, let alone having that happen around someone she's not comfortable with."

"I of all people know that you're not a bad guy at all, James. You're one of the greatest people out there who's not afraid to fight what they believe in," added Remus wisely. "And in fact you're always putting other people before yourself."

"It's true, and if she can't see that then maybe she's just not worth it." Sirius said harshly.

Peter looked around at his peers, thinking he should say something comforting or wise.

"We really, really like you."

It was pretty good for Peter standards.

"James, she knows you're a good guy. I can guarantee you she does not think of you that way, but I'm not going to lie; you still pull some arrogant shit every now and then, but I know that that's just who you are. I can vouch for the fact that you've grown up a lot and that you're not the little kid you were anymore, but if she can't see these changes, past her own pride and accept you as is, well, there's only so much we can do."

And instead of comforting James, Artemis' words made him even more depressed.

"Guys," he said getting up and picking up his bag, "thanks a lot, but I'm just gonna take some time to myself, think about stuff."

So James left, and then there were four.

"Merlin! I need a good snog right now." Ignoring everyone else, Sirius left in search of vulnerable prey.

Artemis looked half disgusted, half tired. She knew she had a long talk ahead of her and she had better start sooner than later, and left.

Remus decided to go see the Charms professor to do a test he had missed due to the recent full moon, and left bidding Peter good bye.

And then, left in a dusty room with staring curiously at dirty sunflower seeds, there was one.

Well? Did it make you vomit? If so, click on that little button below to review and write VOMIT, or something like that and I'll send you the remedy. Well, elaborating would be nice too, but just reviewing would be GRAND.

Cheers!

- m00nshine