A group of seventeen year old boys sat at the Gryffindor table, eating everything in sight. It was Halloween morning, so the normal breakfast was a bit sweeter. You might recognize these boys as the infamous Marauders. The most well known pranksters in the school, also the most popular group in the school. The group was made up of James Potter and Sirius Black, the two ringleaders, Remus Lupin, the shy, smart prefect of the group, and Peter Pettigrew, the one no one knew how he got into the group. They were putting the following touches on their Halloween prank, while stuffing their faces. Which is probably why they didn't hear Dumbledore.
"Good morning everyone! I have an important announcement to make!" he said, cheerfully. "This year we are going to do things a bit more muggle style. Also, we will be having a dance, tonight."
A group of whispers broke out at this, some people were talking excitedly about what this meant. Most where confused. What did he mean muggle style? Muggle style Halloween was different then that of the wizarding world's?
"What I mean to say is that you shall be allowed to wear costumes, a special trip has been planned to go to Hogsmade this afternoon, so that you all can find something to wear," Dumbledore said, feeling quite pleased with himself. "You can go back to your breakfasts now."
"Oh I can't believe it!" said a first year muggle-born sitting not to far from the Marauders.
"Me either!" squealed her friend. "I wonder if this means we'll get to go Trick-or-Treating? I mean we'll have costumes and everything! This muggle style Halloween idea is Dumbledore's best yet!"
The Marauders, who were done planning looked up with raised eyebrows. Having not been playing attention to Dumbledore, they had no clue what was going on.
"Trick-or-Treating?" Sirius questioned.
"Costumes?" James repeated.
"Muggle-style" Remus mused, this could be fun.
"I wonder if there will be cheese?" Peter asked.
The other three Marauders turned to Peter, looking at him as if he were insane. Cheese? Seriously he was asking about cheese? They briefly wondered why they were friends with him. None of the three boys could come up with a legitimate reason at the current moment.
"Mooney what does this mean?" James asked turning to Remus, deciding to ignore Peter at this moment in time.
"Well muggles have this thing were they dress up in costumes, and go from door to door asked for candy," he explained. "The reason they say trick or threat is because if you don't get candy from the house you're suppose to pull a trick on them."
"Candy?!" Sirius exclaimed happily. "Why didn't you say so Mooney? I love candy! This is gonna be so fun!"
"Erm- Sirius I hate to burst your bubble, but trick-or-treating is for kids," Remus said.
Both James and Sirius looked at Remus with unchanging expressions. "So?" they asked. Not going to let something as unimportant as it being for kids stand between them and candy.
Remus sighed as he realized this and decided to change his tactics. "There aren't any houses to go get candy from."
"Darn! You're right," James said, as he and Sirius began to sulk.
"I thought that there were four houses..." Peter said, confused. Three muffins, one half eaten, flew at him.
--
The four boys entered Hogsmade, which had several shops now sporting costumes traditional to that of what a muggle would wear. They went to the first one they saw and immediately began looking. Peter decided what he wanted right away, and even against his fellow Marauders protest, bought it. James, Sirius, and Remus however, decided to be a bit more sensible.
"Oy! Prongs I found the perfect costume for you!" Sirius yelled to his best friend after they all had split up within the store.
"What is it Padfoot?" James asked, from a rack he was currently looking at.
"Lily Evan's perfect man!" He replied, trying to keep his tone serious.
"Really?!" James was in front of Sirius in less time then thought possible.
Remus shook his head as Sirius burst into laughter. "Prongs, he wasn't being serious..."
"What? Yes I was, that's exactly how I act!" Sirius said with a grin. He looked the serious/Sirius joke.
He rest of the boys groaned and went back to looking for costumes. Today was going to be a long day.
--
After a few hours of looking for costumes, and successfully finding them, the boys headed back. James went up to the Head's Common Room, which he shared with Lily Evans. He couldn't believe his luck, he got to share a common room with the woman of his dreams. It was too bad she hated his guts. He'd tried to change, but she refused to see the differences in him. He wished that she would pay more attention to him, maybe then she'd notice.
Just then said Lily, walked out of her room and into the common room. He expected her to walk right past him, as she normally did, but instead she walked right up to him and smiled brightly at him.
"Hello James," she said sweetly. By this time he was thinking that it was a dream, it had to be, Lily was never this nice to him, or called him James.
"Hello Lily," he replied, it was a dream after all. What could actually happen?
"Listen James, can I ask you for a tiny favor?" she asked.
"Anything!" he said immediately.
"Oh but don't you wanna hear what I want first?" she looked kind of surprised that he agreed so quickly, without question.
"Well," his logical side began to kick in, he should know what he was agreeing to before he agreed. "Okay, yeah I wanna know."
"I thought you might," she said. "See the thing is that this year I think it'd be better if there wasn't a Marauder prank,"
"No Marauder prank!?" James exclaimed, no matter how much of a goddess she was he couldn't agree with that one. "I can't do that Lily, I'm sorry."
She looked a bit upset with him. "Fine, Potter I knew you hadn't changed."
No this wasn't really fair to James. First, Lily tried to use him. Then, she insulted him and made an unfair assumption. He sighed as he watched her stomp out of the common room. He wasn't sure how yet, but he'd make it up to her. He sat and thought for a moment, then a grin lit up his face. This was gonna be perfect.
--
The four marauders walked down into the great hall separately. Which was all part of James' brilliant plan. The first one to enter the hall was Sirius, who was dressed as a vampire. He had a long, black cape that was placed on top of his other black clothing. He'd also magically altered his teeth for the occasion. He was easily recognizable and a flock of girls immediately came to his side. He grinned and flirted with them shamelessly. Next to come down was Remus, he was dressed as a spy from one of those muggle movies he'd watched. He too was recognizable, and a few girls came after him. After that Peter came down in his cheese costume. Everyone looked at him oddly and laughed at him, he smiled happily thinking that they were laughing with him not at him.
Everyone waited for James to come down next, but he didn't. Instead a few more girls and their dates. They all frowned, what could this mean. After a few moments of waiting for him, they gave up. About ten minutes later, James walked down the stairs dressed as Zorro. He had charmed his hair to make it not stick up in it's usual fashion and he thought the mask concealed his identity pretty well. He soon found he was right, because as he walked down into the great hall, no one even glanced twice at him. He grinned at his own brilliance and headed over to the punch bowl where he saw Lily. She had dyed her hair a blond color and it looked shorter, it was pulled up into a bun in the back of her head. She was wearing a light green dress with wings attached to the back. On her feet she wore like green slippers that had white ball of what looked like cotton.
He made his way over to her, tapping on her back lightly. When she turned around and looked at him curiously, he smiled in spite of himself. He had no clue that he'd be this unrecognizable.
"Can I help you?" she asked, titling her head slightly.
"Well yes actually you could," he said. "Would you honor me with a dance?"
She deliberated for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to dance with a complete and total stranger, for all she knew. She decided that it couldn't do much harm. Maybe, if she was lucky Potter would see this and decide to leave her alone. "Sure."
He smiled at her and led her onto the dance floor as a slow song started. He danced with her, holding her close to him. Completely loving the feeling, she looked pretty happy, too. He was pleasantly surprised to note, then he remembered she didn't know it was him, why shouldn't she be happy?
A shriek broke through his thoughts though and he realized that the grand plan was going down. He heard the bark-like laughter of Sirius, who everyone turned to face. Beside him were Remus, Peter and a James look-a-like. Which was another part of the brillant plan that James had come up with, they had paid a 7th year Hufflepuff named Anthony, who was a little more then entusastic to help (he actually turned down the pay), to take some polyjuice potion and pretend to be James. Who were all laughing at the sight above them. Filch was hanging to the wall by his underwear. Everyone laughed as they watched him struggle against the magic that bound him there.
James was a bit surprised to hear Lily giggle quietly. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "I thought you hated those Marauders and their pranks."
"Yeah well it's Filch, I think that this time it's actually pretty funny," she said with a shrug, her green eyes sparkling.
As everyone was looking at Filch another spell was shot toward the ceiling. Soon everyone was looking around to discover that their hair had been changed to an almost blinding shade of orange, with black streaks down the middle. Screams of girls filled the hall, one right in James' ear.
He looked over at Lily who was glaring toward his fellow Marauders, especially at the look-a-like of him. He could sense she was about to go stomping over to yell at them any moment and decided to act quickly. "Hey how about you go yell at them later and we finish dancing?"
She still looked absolutely furious and opened her mouth to tell him that there was no way. He gave her a look that asked her to reconsider. "Please?" he said.
Her eyes softened a little. "Alright, I guess it won't hurt to yell at them tomorrow."
He grinned. "No it wouldn't," he agreed. They began to dance again and he realized that this Halloween had turned out to be quite good. They should do Muggle Halloweens more often around here, he thought.
--
Remus and Sirius watched their best friend dance with the girl of his dreams. They smiled a little bit, it looked that maybe all those years of scheming might have paid off, for now anyway.
"Well it looks like James had his cake and ate it, too," Remus said.
"What cake?" Sirius asked, looking at Remus confused.
"It means he got to prank and get Lily, too," Remus explained.
"Wait isn't it Halloween?" Sirius said.
"Yes," Remus didn't see what his point was. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"So wouldn't he have his candy and eat it, too?" Sirius asked. "Cause you get candy for Halloween right? Not cake?"
Remus rolled his eyes but couldn't help but chuckle a little. "Yeah Padfoot he had his candy and ate it, too."
--
A/N: Alright a little Halloween goodness for yall XD Be sure to review and tell me what you think XD