"What's this Dumbledore's doing?" Peter Pettigrew asked his three friends.
NEWTs were over, and the four of them didn't even see the point of going to class. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were just lounging in the Gryffindor Common Room.
"Says he's going to ask the seventh years if they'd like to put on a concert of some sort," James replied lazily.
"Bet it doesn't go down," Remus commented.
"Okay. Ten galleons it does," Sirius contradicted. He laughed a little to himself as he caught a fly out of the air and squished it in his hand.
"You're o-o-on," Remus agreed, stifling a yawn.
"Bored, yet, Sirius?" James was. One could see it in the way he was lying down.
"Nah. Give me an hour or two."
James stood up and stretched. He told himself he deserved to laze around with the rest of them, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He went straight to the kitchens. The house-elves always liked it when he stopped by. He tickled the pear and walked in.
"James Potter, sir!" echoed throughout the room.
"Hello, mates. Think you could get me the usual?" he asked with a grin.
"The house-elves are sorry, James Potter, sir. We can not feed him, today, sir. We is working on special task appointed by Headmaster, sir," said one of the taller ones.
James made a thoughtful sound. "It wouldn't have anything to do with that concert, now, would it?" he inquired curiously.
"We is not allowed to tell students, James Potter, sir. We is apologizing." The same elf bowed, then they gently led James out of the kitchens.
James sighed as he realized that he would now have to wait until dinner before he could have food. He went back to the Common Room in apathy.
"Problem, Prongs?" asked Peter when James walked in.
He shook his head, not knowing why he felt so bored.
At dinner, Professor Dumbledore requested that all seventh years remain in the Great Hall for an announcement.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the seventh year, this year, four of your number proposed a very interesting performance. I'll let them explain," said Dumbledore.
One girl got up from each house table. A tall girl, with short, cropped, deep red hair, stood up from the Gryffindor table.
"Go, Chory!" the four marauders cheered. They were very good friends with the athletic dancer, whose name was Terpsichore, of the Muse sisters.
A girl, who wasn't the skinniest of the lot, with long, curly, dark blonde hair went up to the front with her nose in the air. Her name was Polyhymnia, but all in the Slytherin house called her simply Polly.
The female from Ravenclaw was, by far, the prettiest. Chory was attractive, but she had too many angles to be pretty. Polly's air destroyed any prettiness she might have had. Euterpe, who preferred going be her full name, walked with grace and humility. Her layered, white-blonde hair cascaded down her back, straight as rain.
The last girl, from Hufflepuff, to get up was not daunted by her lateness. She smiled a goofy grin as her brown ponytail bobbed playfully. As she strolled, a Slytherin stuck out his foot and tripped her. But Thalia, or Thally, got up, gave a thumbs up, and laughed as she finished going up.
As the four girls stood up there, obviously so very different, their faces were eerily the same.
Chory spoke first. "Well, we'd heard from our sisters what the seventh years get from the rest of the school."
"And we feel that we need to give everyone something back," Euterpe explained.
"Right. That's why we get to go make fools of ourselves for this little concert," Thally added.
"But let's try to have some dignity. The whole school, parents, guardians, and Ministry officials are welcome to come watch the show," Polly said.
"With that said, our dear Headmaster has gone through the trouble to find a myriad of songs. He says he even wrote to his future self for muggle music of the times," Euterpe informed.
"Yeah, so if you don't have any idea of any muggle music, you're sunk." Thally gave a hearty wink to the Slytherin gang.
"On the staff table are blocks of wood with the title and the writer of the songs. You simply touch one, and listen to the song. If you like it, there is a sheet of lyrics underneath, and you take the block," said Chory.
"No song can be sung more than once. So if the block and lyrics are gone, you can't have that song." Polly said this in a tone that said, 'don't even try it.'
"But there can be more than one person in a group. All of Hogwarts could do one song if they so choose. And you can do more than one song. We ask that you do no more than two, because of the time limit. We can't have this going until three o'clock in the morning," said Thally.
"One last thing before you go choose your song," Chory interrupted Thally's banter, "Know that you can alter the lyrics however you want. Please, no vulgar language that first years wouldn't be able to hear."
"Go ahead," Euterpe ended as the four made their way out of the front.
With a swish of his wand, Dumbledore had many tables, that weren't connected, sprinkled about the room so that groups could work on their song privately.
The four Muse sisters went to the table in the very back, having their song and lyrics already.
"We should do one, eh Prongsy?" Sirius suggested.
"Probably—"
"Prongs! Moony! Padfoot! I found us the perfect song!" Wormtail shouted. He made sure he held onto the wooden block.
The three made their way to him. They touched it and heard a song that talked about this punk named Jordan. The block read, 'If You See Jordan, by Something Corporate.'
"Why is this the perfect song?" Remus asked. He had no clue why they'd sing a song about a boy they didn't know.
"Moony, Moony, Moony." Sirius shook his head. He grinned a wolfish smile. "We can change to lyrics. Let's say to…Snivellus?"
James got the idea and a mischievous light came into his eyes. "I can just see it now." He put a finger on the block and thought for a bit. "They saw he'll kill us all, and as you see, we're all swelled up with fear, because he'll curse us in the back. If you see Snivellus…" He stopped singing to the tune. "We can't say the whole thing. It's three syllables; the original is two. It doesn't fit."
"We could always shorten it," Remus advised. "Like Sniv'lus or something—"
"Good idea. That'll work perfectly," declared Sirius. "I say the four of us do that one together. I don't know about you blokes, but I want to do one on my own." He grinned from ear to ear, thinking of how funny this whole thing was going to be.
"I'd like to do one myself, as well," said Remus.
"Hey, marauders." Chory walked in between them. "I hope you're having fun."
"Oh, we are, Chory darling," Sirius responded, still smiling like a crazed maniac.
"Would you guys like to do a song against the Slytherins? I asked Euterpe, and Thally, and they're excited. Well, Thally is. Euterpe just shook her head like she felt sorry for us prejudiced fools. We get all of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff to do this song, to show that we're not going to take their bull," she proposed.
"Sounds good to me," James agreed.
"Well, a few of us are going to have to act like Slytherins for the song to make sense. I know, I know. You all would rather die than act as Slytherins. We'll get someone. It'll be great. I've already spread the word to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. I'm now working on Gryffindor."
"And everyone wants to do it?" Remus asked.
"Yeah. See, we'll make it look like we're saying this to Death Eaters instead of Slytherins, but we'll know it's aimed at Slytherin." Chory gave a wink before moving towards the next group.
"Prongs, Wormtail, if you aren't going to do a song on your own, could you start trying to change the lyrics for this one? I mean, since you'll have more time," Remus requested. James and Peter nodded and took the lyrics and block with them.
Sirius was already searching through songs. 'Hmmm…Born to Be Wild seems good…But Bouncing off the Wall sounds better…' he thought. Then he found the perfect song.
Remus was looking, but couldn't find anything other than love songs. 'Why are all this artists obsessed with love?' he mused. 'Complicated? Probably another love song.' On accident, he touched that block.
'Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else, gets me frustrated…'
Remus, not expecting a song anything like that, just stood there for a moment. He listened to it again, out of curiosity. He chuckled a bit as it told his feelings towards Sirius and James. They were different in public, always trying to be cool, but when it was just the four of them, they were the best of friends he could ever ask for. Sure, it annoyed him from time to time. He'd seen them blow friendships with other students out of the water because of their public attitudes, like snobs. But he'd also seen them tutoring Peter patiently when he didn't understand something, which was most of the time.
He took the block and the lyrics sheet, and went over by James, Peter, and Sirius, who had found his song as well.
"I'll tell you my song if you'll tell me yours," Sirius offered.
"No, thanks, Padfoot. Mine's a surprise."
"Fine. Mine'll be, too, then."
And the rest of the time, they discussed the lyrics to 'If You See Sniv'lus.'
(A/N: This whole story's going to be here in about a half hour from exactly 2:00 am, my time...[if you don't know my time, too bad...:-p], so...maybe less than a half hour, all of it should be here...XD Enjoy! I assure you, these first 2 chapters are nothing but prologues...:-D)