Chapter: I
Word Count: 3536
Characters: SB, RL, PP, JP, LE
A/N: I moved this one to Chapter One during my edits because I really enjoyed going back and reading it. Enjoy!
Monday October 18th, 1976
Lily groaned as she woke to the sounds of shuffling in the dorm room beyond her curtains. She tried to turn over and go back to sleep, but a quick use of the tempus spell revealed that if she didn't get up now, there would be no time to shower before breakfast. She brushed past her fellow dormmates into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. (Anecdote: "Morning Lily" was a term used by her dormmates in hushed tones in reference to the terrifying beast that rose every day from Lily's bed. The ferocious creature was usually replaced by a sweet, docile girl after a nice hot shower or cup of coffee. If one encounters a "Morning Lily" in the wild, it is best to give the being a wide berth and not speak to it until this transformation has taken place. It's a pity no one ever warned James about this until they moved in together... But that's a tale for another time).
After showering and dressing in the usual school uniform and feeling much more human, she returned to the dorm to find her best friend, Mary, to head down to the Great Hall for breakfast. Throughout the castle, students from every house followed a similar morning routine with minor variations. Barring the students that overslept, the entire school filled the Great Hall for a full English breakfast under the ceiling enchanted to reflect the crisp, clear autumn day outside.
If four of the students in Gryffindor seemed slightly more agitated than usual, no one else took notice. Everyone around them was too busy trying to cram breakfast foods into their faces before morning classes commenced.
Sirius Black had a serious (no pun intended) leg-jiggling problem. His friend James studied him for an entire day once and noted that his leg literally never stopped moving. When he was calm or bored, the jiggling was at a lazy, relaxed pace. When he became agitated, though, the leg bounced up and down hard enough to shake a table. The morning of October 18th found Sirius with BOTH legs bouncing so dramatically that the silverware all along the Gryffindor table was rattling slightly and the scrambled eggs in front of him seemed to be hopping right off his plate.
"Sirius, I swear to god mate, if you don't stop bouncing your legs this instant I'll curse them off at the knees!" James exclaimed. It bears mentioning that this particular bad habit of the eldest Black child was James' biggest pet peeve. Sirius made a conscious effort to quell the jiggling, but only managed to reduce the shaking from an 8 on the Richter scale down to a 5.
"I can't help it, I'm nervous! When d'you think it'll happen?" Sirius asked (I shouldn't need to warn you to batten down the hatches when one of the most infamous pranksters at the school is nervous).
"Well, we never tested the stuff, so it might not happen at all," James placated his friend.
"I told you both that this was a terrible idea! What if the potion has some sort of side effect? People could get hurt." Remus spoke up from the other side of the table. He was mopping up some of Peter's pumpkin juice which had spilled during Earthquake Black.
"Pish posh- it's practically harmless! We followed the instructions in the book perfectly!" James said waving his hands about.
"The book that you found in the restricted section," Remus said slowly.
"Yes."
"That was written in an archaic dialect of Old English that you needed help translating."
"Yep, that's the one!" Stated James happily. Clearly, he saw no issue in the matter.
"What's the potion supposed to do again?" asked Peter, finally done mourning the loss of his juice.
"Assuming you poured it in the proper goblets in the kitchens last night-" started James.
"A huge assumption," Sirius interjected.
"Right, astronomical, really. But assuming you did, everyone at the Slytherin table will receive a temporary gender reassignment, lasting 24 hours at the most!" James explained.
"Sailing past the part where I lecture you on what a stupid plan it is and how much trouble you'll be in if you're caught, why did you have to go and make Peter complicit in your plot? You could have easily left him out of it," Remus asked, clearly exasperated.
"Well, the plan was actually to do it ourselves," Sirius began.
"We would have preferred that actually, no offense Peter, but we were otherwise occupied last night. Double date with our darling Head of House and some trophies that needed polishing. We simply couldn't bear to pull ourselves away, but Peter saved us and took one for the team! Snuck right down to the kitchens all by himself and poured the potion into the goblets of each of the Slytherin students. It was quite brave of you, Wormtail!" James said. Peter began to cough and splutter and turned red in the face.
"You shouldn't have done it, you'll be in massive trouble," warned Remus.
"Um, guys?" Peter squeaked.
"Not now, Peter," James said before turning back to Remus. "We figured there is, in fact, a 50% chance that Dumbledore will love the idea and grant us each 100 house points for daring, excellent brewing technique, and panache."
"Guys." Peter said more firmly. The other boys ignored him.
"I'm pretty sure there are no house points given for 'panache.'" Remus stated.
"Guys!" Peter yelled.
"Learn to wait your turn, Peter!" Sirius exclaimed. "In response to you, Remus, I think we can all agree that our headmaster is all about the panache."
Finally frustrated to the point of outburst, Peter leapt to his feet (though it didn't result in a noticeable height difference) and wailed in a voice much higher than his own, "I PUT THE POTION IN ALL THE GOBLETS!"
Silence reigned in the surrounding area as people stopped eating and stared at the boy, who was quite obviously raving mad. James, Sirius, and Remus grasped the severity of the situation, but were too flummoxed to reprimand the boy. Before any of them could regain the ability to think coherently or speak real, human words, the boy began to change before their eyes. He grew remained the same height, but his skin began to bubble as weight redistributed to his chest and caboose regions. His hair lengthened slightly and before anyone could register what was happening, a female Peter stood in his place.
The Great Hall fell deadly silent, then burst into chaos as throughout the hall, students began switching genders. Even the faculty were not spared in the culling. If you ever thought you wanted to see a female version of Horace Slughorn, I can assure you that you are wrong, and you should feel bad. The only ones who escaped from the debacle was Aaron Aaronson, a small first year Hufflepuff who was allergic to pumpkin juice, as well as a handful of students who, when questioned later, stated they just didn't like the taste of the beverage and had chosen to drink water instead.
The entire student population was in an uproar until Dumbledore stood at his- er, her- podium and roared with the help of a sonorous charm, "SILENCE!" And silence fell, just like magic. "Now, then. It appears we have suffered the effects of a transfiguratory potion. Until the causes can be identified and an antidote prepared, we will be continuing with classes as usual," he (she?) said, holding a hand out to silence the resultant protests. "Some ground rules for the time being- If I hear of any untoward or inappropriate behavior, the culpable student will be punished. Severely. There will be zero tolerance on this matter. That is all, please make your way to morning classes." Perhaps the oddest part of the entire speech was that the headmaster did not appear to lose any facial hair in the transition to the opposite sex.
The pupils all tried to rush the door at once. Several would attempt to skive off classes, which, to my way of thinking, is a very reasonable response to having bits where there weren't bits before. Others, mostly the formerly female population, were probably rushing off to the dormitories to change into something a little less, well, drafty.
The marauders hung back towards the rear of the stampede discussing the latest developments.
"Pete, everyone's going to know it's us," James whisper-shouted. "You basically stood up and declared it right before turning into a chick!"
"We'll be in detention for the rest of the year," Peter wailed.
"If you're not expelled," Remus chimed in helpfully. This set Peter off and he dissolved into a hiccup-y, blubbery mess.
"Relax, mates! You're missing the entire point!"
"And what might that be, Padfoot?" James asked, rising to the bait.
"We get to spend all day inside of a woman!" Sirius exclaimed, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Sirius had transformed into a predictably attractive brunette with striking grey eyes framed by thick lashes.
"Dude…" said James, tilting his head slightly. "You do make a damn hot chick… If it weren't for Lily… LILY! I wonder how she's doing! I have to go find her and coach her through the difficulty of being a man!" he shouted before taking off, pushing others aside with his new, fairly-muscular, if slightly more curvaceous, frame.
"He is right," Remus teased, "You do make a cute girl. It's really an improvement, maybe we should keep you this way!"
Sirius just tossed his long dark brown hair over his shoulder at the bookish girl and stomped off with a huff. Remus was stuck with a still-hiccupping Peter. Fantastic.
Back at the Gryffindor common room, the students were faced with a new, infuriating problem. Or half of them were, anyway. The females could no longer climb their own staircase to access their rooms. This ancient potion seemed to fool the gender detection charm on the stairs that turned them into a slide when a boy tried to access the girl's tower.
When James arrived in the room, he came face to face with an irate ginger man with impressive sideburns and a five o'clock shadow sprouting around the jaw.
"Did you do this, James Potter?" the man yelled into his face.
"Lily! Lily, you're a lumberjack!" he cried. "You're the most beautiful lumberjack I've ever-" It was at that point that James Potter, the curvy brunette, took a lumberjack-sized fist to the face, thus rendering her unconscious for the next five minutes.
Eventually, the girls convinced some of the more trustworthy guys to scamper up to grab belongings. The process was long and complicated, however, causing most of the Gryffindors to arrive late to first period. Luckily, a similar scenario was playing out in the other common rooms simultaneously.
The Marauders had Charms first. Peter, Remus, and Sirius had walked directly there from breakfast, while James drifted in thirty minutes late with a large purple bruise blossoming on his jaw. Flitwick had given them all name tags so he could keep them straight in their new, unrecognizable forms. James' friends seated themselves in front of James to block him from the red-headed man sporting a 'Lily' name tag glaring at him from down the aisle.
Flitwick found it impossible to corral the class into any real learning. Every time he started to squeak out instructions, the whole class dissolved into laughter at his high-pitched voice. He eventually gave up and let them have free reign to practice all the charms they had learned up to that point in the year. This gave the boys more time to talk amongst themselves.
"James, what happened to you?" Remus asked.
"Yeah, looks like you went a round with Hagrid and lost. Badly." Sirius drawled, absent-mindedly wrapping his new long hair around his finger. Peter, having overcome his earlier panic, started cackling in laughter at the idea of a female version of Hagrid.
"It was Lily, if you must know," James sniffed.
"What did you do this time?" Remus asked. Merlin knew James didn't need special circumstances to piss Lily off.
"I'm not sure. I don't know if she's mad at me because she thinks we're behind this prank or because I called her a lumberjack," he explained. This sent Sirius into a fit of barking laughter which set Peter off again. Remus tilted his head speculatively at the ginger.
"She is especially masculine," he said slowly.
"Well I told her she was the most beautiful lumberjack I'd ever seen, but she didn't seem to appreciate it," James replied dejectedly. Remus patted his shoulder slowly.
"There, there. I'm sure you meant well." Lily chose this time to lumber over to their group and loom over them.
"What happens if this doesn't wear off by tonight, Potter? Where are we all supposed to sleep?" She demanded.
"You can sleep in my bed!" he exclaimed. The reader should be aware that James actually thought this was a helpful thing to say. Let's blame the new hormones in his system and skip the part where James gets hit in the face again…
Somehow, during the break between Charms and Transfiguration, Sirius had convinced one of the girls to trade their skirt for his pants. He had then proceeded to lose several inches of fabric and he walked into class with a tight skirt that ended at mid-thigh. The top three buttons on his uniform shirt were undone, showing off his new and exciting...erm…assets.
There were a couple downsides to this wardrobe change. The first being that he got incredibly distracted every time he happened to glance down. This cut back significantly on his productivity as a human being. The other was that there was a very, very angry Scotsman standing at the front of the Transfiguration classroom who had no tolerance for tomfoolery.
"Sirius Orion Black," the Scotsman ground out. "What in the blazes do you think you're wearing?"
"Minnie!" Sirius exclaimed, seeming not to notice 'Minnie's' current mood. "You look positively ravishing today."
"And you, Mister Black, look like a harlot. 10 points from Gryffindor for uniform violations," the Professor said, waving her wand to return Black's outfit to school uniform parameters. Sirius pouted, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
It was clear that McGonagall was not going to let a silly little think like a penis to stop her from holding a perfectly normal class. The students suffered through a particularly arduous lesson on NEWT level transfigurations and were assigned one roll of parchment on the theory behind untransfiguration, due at their next class. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the bell rang signaling lunch time.
Nobody so much as looked at the pumpkin juice at this meal. Word had traveled that it was the offending beverage and everyone avoided it as if they could spare themselves, even though it was too late. Dumbledore stood to make an announcement that they were no closer to finding a cure and at this point were just hoping it would wear off on its own. This approach really fostered a feeling of trust and good will toward the headmaster, as I'm sure you can imagine.
By third period, no one was in a particularly good mood. Even those who refused to eat or drink so they didn't have to use the facilities had endured several hours getting familiar with their new anatomy and the novelty had worn off. Only a handful were still enjoying the change, which included Sirius who was still parading around in his new skirt.
The boys had a free period, except for Peter who was still taking Divination at NEWT level, Merlin knows why. They were sprawled out over the common room like they owned the place. Remus was bent over a table diligently working on the essay that McGonagall had assigned them. He let out a subconscious huff of annoyance as his light brown hair kept falling into his face and ruining his concentration. James was laying on the couch in front of the fire in a very unladylike manner with one leg thrown over the back of it.
"James, shut your legs!" Sirius admonished.
"I'm a feminist, Pads. Equal posture for all genders!" James rebelled. Sirius shook his head at the lost cause that was his best friend. He stood up from his spot on the ottoman and walked over to Remus and gathered up the werewolf's long hair, pulling it back out of his face and securing it with a whispered charm.
"There you go, doll. We can't have your hair distracting you from your studies, now can we?" he purred in Remus' ear causing his friend to blush slightly and mutter his thanks. Sirius had leaned over to help secure his hair, providing a very nice view of his new curves. Remus' eyes practically popped out of his head at the scenery.
"Sirius, where did you get that?!" he asked in a strangled voice.
"Whatever are you talking about, dear Moony?" Sirius asked with a devious smile on his face. He hadn't moved from his place next to Remus, knowing exactly what he was doing to his friend.
"You- you're wearing a bra!" Remus hissed, unable to pull his eyes away from the offending scrap of black lace. This immediately attracted James' attention causing him to jump off the couch and come have a look. He reached out to move Sirius' shirt out of the way to see the new addition to his friend's wardrobe but Sirius smacked his hand away tsk-ing.
"You don't have to be so grabby, James. You could have just asked if you wanted to see," he said, slowly reaching for his own shirt buttons.
Unfortunately, Lily had chosen this precise second to enter the common room and she gave a disgusted grunt while rolling her eyes at James and muttering something about pigs. James ran over to her, desperately trying to explain the situation so she would understand his pervy behavior. He was so involved in pleading with the love of his life that he missed Remus' strangled moan as Sirius continued to de-robe. He also missed Remus pulling Sirius up to the boys' dorms by his red and yellow striped tie and the sound of their dormitory door slamming shut loudly.
By dinner, James had two black eyes and a broken nose, Peter had started menstruating, and Sirius and Remus couldn't keep their hands off each other any time their friends' backs were turned. Lily was sporting a full and magnificent beard and her friend Mary's voice kept cracking spectacularly. Tensions were so high that the House points system had to be put on hold because the points were dropping so swiftly.
Dumbledore approached his podium in a new set of magenta robes and cleared his throat to indicate that everyone should be quiet and pay attention to him. It is, of course, difficult to ignore an old bearded witch in bright pink robes, so the hall fell silent rather quickly.
"Good news, students! Today's social experiment has come to a conclusion. Professor Slughorn assures me that he has brewed an antidote to our affliction and delivered it to everyone's pumpkin juice for this evening's meal. Drink up!" This announcement was met by thunderous applause. After the first brave soul risked Slughorn's creation without any adverse effects, there was a mad rush to drink as much pumpkin juice as possible. By the end of the meal, every student had reverted to his or her original gender.
"Pete, you might be off the hook!" James exclaimed. "He called it a social experiment! Surely that means it has his approval. It was just a learning experiment!"
"Wait, I might be off the hook? What about you two? You were the master minds behind the operation!" Peter exclaimed in outrage.
"It's really sweet that you think we would be smart enough to accomplish such a feat, but everyone heard you take credit this morning. It's okay, Peter, we'll do our best to protect you if they come for you!" James said, cackling.
Neither boy noticed that Sirius and Remus were very focused on not looking each other in the eye. In fact, Sirius had captured McKinnon in a serious conversation on the pros and cons of skirts as a wardrobe staple while Remus pulled out a textbook and was 'reading' furiously.
As Sirius' debate with Marlene grew more heated, he jumped up onto the bench to fully demonstrate the range of motion and adequate ventilation provided by his nice skirt. One stern glare from McGonagall was all it took for him to jump back down. His friends had finished eating and he threw an arm around James' and Peter's shoulders as they traipsed back to the common room to bask in their comedic genius and the thrill of getting away with the best prank of their Marauding careers.
A/N: And there you have it! Please review to tell me what you think!