Chapter One
Lyric's P.O.V.
This is the story of my life. My name is Lyric Hayden, and I'm 14 years old, and this is my story beginning in my fourth year of Hogwarts. I'm in Gryffindor, my best friends in the world are Lily Evans, Marlene McKinnon, and Alice Hinton, and I was nicknamed 'Shadow' because I blend into a crowd. And later (as in as soon as I joined the Quiditch team) Racing was added to the beginning of my name, because I could run faster than anybody else on the team. I don't stand out, I hate being the center of attention, and more than anything in the world, I hate people that think that they're perfect. Why? Because we are humans, and it's because of, or maybe in spite of this fact that nobody's perfect, and as cheesy and cliché as that sounds, it's completely true.
Personally, I like being invisible, and frankly, I used to be quite good at it. Up until about a week ago, I was pretty sure that nobody in the school aside from the teachers and my three friends knew my name, or even noticed my existence. And I was happy with that. But no, I had to make it as my house's Seeker. Worst mistake of my life. Now almost everybody knows who I am, and I can't stand it. Some days, I wish more than anything that I could go back in time, and stop myself from joining that team, if only James freaking Potter hadn't seen me and convinced me to try out. But, there's nothing that I can do about it now, what's done is done, and there's no going back.
I had been at Hogwarts for a little over three months, and those were definitely some of the weirdest months of my life...
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh!" I groaned, which might have been the most articulate I'd ever been in the morning. It was at this point that I could feel my bed being jumped upon by the petite blonde otherwise know as Alice Hinton. I kicked my legs out and I tripped her, making her fall flat on her butt. That got me sitting bolt upright, after I shook with silent laughter for a moment.
"Lyric, you are a cruel person," Alice grumbled, standing up and sitting down on my legs.
"Yeah, sometimes I wonder why the Sorting Hat didn't put me in Slytherin," I said, rubbing my eyes. Lily gave a mock gasp and cried out,
"It lives!" I scowled at her and folded my arms over my chest.
"I hate you," I said, sighing and heading for the bathroom.
"No you don't," Lily said.
"You're right, it's impossible for anybody to hate anybody except for you hating James Potter." I said, sarcastically.
"Don't you dare speak his name!" she shouted, tackling me to the ground. I landed with a loud grunt.
"Can I please take my shower now?" I asked, shoving her off of me. She stood up and made a mock 'after you' bow and I stood up grumpily, and locked the bathroom door behind me. I turned the water on just short of scalding, and stood there until I was all nice and wrinkly. I dressed quickly and brushed my black hair as quickly as I could. Sometimes having nice limp pin straight hair was a blessing in disguise. I tucked my left side bangs behind my ear and grabbed my wand off of the table next to my bed. I grabbed by bag and stuffed my books and a few reports inside, along with a few quills, extra parchment, and a bottle of ink. I ran down the steps to the common room, when I crashed right into something. It took me a moment to realize that the something that I ran into was actually a someone.
"Sorry!" I yelped. I looked up to see somebody with honey blond hair and blue/gray eyes laying flat on his back. I heard him cough and start to sit up. Of course I would run into him of all people at an embarrassing moment like this. I had just run into the guy that I had had a crush on for the past three years. I had just run into Remus Lupin...
I could feel my face getting warmer as my normally pale skin turned pink.
"Sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going," he said, his blue/gray eyes staring into my dark blue ones.
"No, it was totally my fault, I shouldn't have been running like that," I said, unable to look away from his piercing gaze. Suddenly, he stood up, and offered his hand to me. I could almost play connect the dots with the scars that were on the back of his hand. Something seemed to pass between the two of us, because even after I was standing, his larger hand continued to hold my smaller one. Suddenly, I heard footsteps coming down the boy's staircase, and Remus' three friends; James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew, were visible. The two of us jumped apart, and I could tell that my face was now red, and I could see that Remus' cheeks and the back of his neck were turning pink.
"Hey Remus, who's this with you?" Sirius asked, looking at me and wiggling his eyebrows in what was probably meant to be a seductive motion, but just made me want to laugh.
"This is Lyric Hidden," he said. I was surprised that he knew my name.
"Oh, are you new?" Peter asked. Typical.
"I'm in fourth year with you guys, we started first year together, I was partnered with James in Potions for a week last month, I'm on our Quiditch team, I'm the seeker." I listed, knowing that they probably wouldn't remember me. That was when recognition seemed to register with them. I just rolled my eyes and said,
"I have to go to breakfast." I turned to leave, but somebody had a tight grasp on my wrist.
"Why don't you walk with us?" Sirius asked. I shrugged and did an 'okay, since it seems like I don't really have an option,' face. We all turned and walked out of the portrait whole.
When we got down to the Gryffindor table, I could feel Lily glaring daggers at me, as I tried to hide behind the four of them. People were staring. I don't like it when people stare at me. When they sat down, I was about to go over to Lily, Marlene, and Alice, but once again, my wrist was pulled on, and I found myself firmly seated between Remus and Sirius. I gave them a questioning look, but they either didn't notice it, or they chose to ignore it. Deciding that being subtle wasn't working, I went for the more direct route.
"Okay guys, why am I here, and why am I not allowed to leave?" I asked. They all gave me startled looks, but quickly recomposed themselves.
"Well, we were wondering if you knew anything about the people that have been pranking us? The Hunters. Can you tell us age? House? How many of them there are?" James asked.
"Why would I know anything about that?" I asked.
"Well, you're quiet, and nobody knows who you are, you could be our spy, get any information that you can get on them," Peter said. I raised my eyebrows at him, trying to show him that I thought that it was a ridiculous thing to suggest. Again, he didn't get it.
"Well I'm sorry, but I didn't even know that you were being pranked. So I don't really know how much help I'd be." I said, trying not to smirk.
"Well, now you know, so will you help us or not?" James asked, getting straight to the point. I hesitated a moment before nodding my head.
"Good, now you're an honorary Marauder. We Marauders watch out for each other, so if you need help, all you have to do is ask. You ready to start snooping, Lyric?" Sirius asked, a wicked grin on his face. I nodded, stood up, and walked over to my three friends.
"What did they want?" Lily asked.
"They wanted to know who has been pranking them. They suspect the Hunters," I said, referring to the name that the four of us had chosen a few years prior. By doing so, we could claim our pranks, and not get punished for doing said pranks. Our favorite targets were the Marauders and the Slytherins, but we were always careful to avoid Severus Snape.
"Maybe we should prank them, to give you a fighting chance at being their informant." Alice suggested, an evil smirk spreading across her face. We all nodded in agreement. That was when I could almost see the gears turning in Lily's head.
"I have an idea, I'll explain as soon as we can go someplace quiet." Lily said, picking up her bag, standing and motioning for us to follow her. Once we were out of the Great Hall, we ran up two flights of stairs, turned left, and crossed in front of a part of a wall three times. When a door appeared, we stepped through into the Room of Requirement. We all flopped down onto a couch, and turned toward Lily.
"Okay, so what were you thinking?" I asked.
"Well, what if we made a polyjuice potion, and changed into the boys, and terrorized the school as them? How awesome would that be?" Lily explained.
"That would be awesome! But brewing a potion like that would take like three months." Alice said sadly.
"No it wouldn't, I've been making one for the last couple of months. It's all done! All we need now is their hair, and we can pull the prank. And I believe that Lyric can help us with that part, if you can get into their room, or if you can distract them while we get it." Lily said, smiling.
"I'll distract them, don't you think that it would be weird if they saw me taking hair from their brushes?" I asked. They all shrugged as if that made sense. That was when the bell rang, signaling the end of breakfast. We all exited the Room of Requirement, and I followed Lily down to the dungeons as we headed to the Potions classroom.
We were a couple of minutes late, but seeing as I was with Lily, and the door was at the back, and his back was to us, Professor Slughorn didn't say anything to us when we quietly put our stuff down at the back of the classroom and took the furthest back table that we could. I looked at the board and started copying the notes that dear old Professor Sluggy had written down.
"I'll distract them at lunch, and we can prank them tomorrow." I whispered to her as I reached down to get my Potions textbook.
"'Kay," she whispered back. The rest of the day passed by quickly until lunch came by. By then I was jittery, and probably looked like I was scared out of my wits. But I was actually quite excited.
"Hey guys, what's up?" I asked, sitting down between Remus and Peter.
"Nothing, did you find out something, or did you just miss us too much to stay away?" Sirius asked.
"Actually, I wanted to ask you something. Do the Hunters leave anything behind, maybe something that could give me a clue as to who they might be?" I asked.
"Yeah, they leave a sign floating above our heads or wherever else they've struck. Always that silver badge with that bow and arrow on it. Why?" Remus asked.
"Just wondering so I could narrow my search. Aside from that, do you see anything else odd whenever they prank you?" I asked, hoping that they would answer with 'no' so that they would have no clues about us other than the sign.
"Nope, that's it. Just that sign," Peter said sighing. That sign that they kept referring to was our way of claiming our pranks. When I looked over and saw the rest of the Hunters coming into the Great Hall, I stood up and walked over to them.
"How did it go?" I asked nervously.
"No problems." Marlene said, sounding almost disappointed.
"No need to sound so disappointed, Marls, you'll have plenty of trouble to get into tomorrow, but get blamed for nothing." I said, an evil smirk playing across my face. An identical smirk covered the rest of the Hunters' faces as we sat down to eat...