Disclaimer: All Harry Potter trademarks and material are property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. I'd also like to point out that I'm well aware of the fact that Fruit Loops and Michael Jackson were not in existance at the time of the Marauders, but I chose to mention those things despite having this knowledge.


"Peter, have you seen Sirius and James this morning?" Remus asked as he entered the Gryffindor common room to find Peter sitting with Alex on the floor by the fireplace.

"No one's seen them. We asked some of the people that were out here when we woke up." Peter had a slightly confused expression on his face when he turned to look at Remus. "It's not normal for the two of them to be awake so early. We usually have to poke and prod them until they finally wake up.

"Liz isn't in bed either!" Kat exclaimed as she came in through the portrait hole, receiving a few dirty looks from some younger Gryffindor's. "Oh, don't look at me like that," she snapped at them before going over to sit on the couch. "It can't be a good thing if they're all awake and missing."

"It probably has something to do with them sneaking off last night, after dinner," Remus stated as he sat down next to Kat. "I don't suppose we could just go to breakfast and wait to see if they show up?"

"Breakfast sounds good to me," Alex said, hopping up off of the floor. "Gabby, we're going to breakfast now, come on." She spoke to her friend who had just come down the stairs and into the common room. She pulled Peter up off of the floor and then took his hand as she began to skip out of the room, telling Peter to skip with her. Kat, Remus, and Gabby all laughed and followed after them. The five of them discussed the situation of their missing friends as they headed to get breakfast. When they arrived, they heard a commotion coming from inside the Great Hall. Someone was screaming at another person and as soon as the five of them realized that the voice belonged to Liz, they ran to the doors, where a large crowd of students had gathered, and looked inside to see a mess of confetti and ink all over the place.

"Wicked," Alex said after they had pushed their way to the front of the crowd. Standing in the middle of the room were James, Sirius, and Liz. The three of them were covered from head to toe in ink and confetti, just like everything around them. "How do you suppose that came about?" she asked, turning to the others.

"Something tells me Peeves overheard the three of them plotting something last night, and now they're suffering the consequence." Remus chuckled softly as he continued to look around, only to realize that their three mates were not the only ones in the Great Hall covered in the ink and confetti. Professors Slughorn and McGonagall, as well as Severus Snape, Lily Evans, and a few other early risers had apparently come into the Great Hall at a very wrong time.

"If Snape is such an early riser, why doesn't he go soak in the bathtub for a few hours, before coming to breakfast?" Gabby looked at the greasy haired sixth year with disgust.

"Look at Professor Slughorn!" Alex giggled, pointing to their Potions instructor. "He looks like he rather enjoyed being showered in ink and confetti." They all laughed, including some of the people around them that had heard what she said.

"Peeves, you pest! How dare you?" They heard Liz screeching at the little ghost who was bobbing up and down, cackling while being chastised by not just her, but McGonagall as well. "This is not funny! You ruined everything! We didn't even get to do anything! It's all your fault!" James and Sirius were both cracking up, clearly amused by what had happened. "You two stop laughing! Do you have any idea how long it takes to get ink out of hair?" Sirius stopped laughing immediately, his smile fading into a look of despair. Liz wiped some of the ink off of her face and began marching out of the hall. The two boys followed her and caught her twice when she slipped because of all the ink.

"My hair! My precious, precious hair!" Sirius was shrieking as they went down the hall. "Is it really hard to get ink out of your hair?" He turned to Liz, who simply gave him a 'drop dead' look. "Nevermind." He quickened his pace and James ran after him, both of them sliding on the floor like it was a skating rink. Liz threw her hands into the air in an exasperated manner and slipped again. Fortunately, Kat had been following them and barely managed to catch her while trying to keep a straight face.

"You know, black really is your color." Kat started laughing as Liz straightened out her robes. The ink turned bright purple as they continued walking, causing Kat to gasp. "Oh my! It's color changing ink! That's… not funny." She stopped herself from laughing too hard when seeing the look on Liz's face. "We should definitely get you out of these clothes and cleaned off before it dries."

"Really? I had no idea," Liz said sarcastically as they went up the stairs and into the Ravenclaw common room. "I'm going to take a shower, because I obviously need one again. I'll meet you in the Great Hall for breakfast when I'm done. I'm sure they'll have it cleaned up soon." She shooed Kat away and headed into the bathroom.

About an hour later, Kat looked up to see Liz walking over to sit beside her. "So, did it all come off?" she asked once Liz had taken a seat.

"Yes, fortunately it did. I had to use magic to siphon some of it off though. Is there a reason that James and Sirius still aren't back? There's no reason it should've taken them longer to get cleaned off than it did for me to." Liz was looking up and down the Gryffindor table trying to make sure she hadn't missed them amongst the many other faces. "Wait, where's Remus?" she asked before Kat could answer her first question.

"James came back about half an hour ago and pulled Remus away from the table. When he was dragging him out of here, I believe I heard him say something about Sirius being nearly in tears over his hair." Kat was grinning as she explained everything. "Sometimes, I wonder if Sirius is really a guy, with the way he gets over his hair."

"Oh, he's definitely a guy. Trust me." Liz was nodding her head as she reached for a piece of toast. Looking at Kat, she realized that her friend was staring at her with an eyebrow raised in curiosity. "Oh, you know that's not what I meant." She smiled slightly and buttered her toast.

"Sure. If you say so," Kat said with a laugh.

"Psht. If anything hot and steamy had happened between the two of us, I'm sure everyone would know about it. Sirius can't keep his mouth shut." Liz munched on her toast and glanced over at Kat. "Have you finished eating already?"

"Yeah. We all finished eating awhile ago. We were just waiting for you three." Kat took a sip from her glass of orange juice. "There's still half an hour left until classes and Professor Flitwick is coming around to make our schedules right now. What classes are you going to take?" she asked, turning her gaze from their Head of House to Liz.

"Defense Against the Dark Arts, Divination, Transfiguration, Potions, and Astronomy," Liz replied between bites of toast. "How about you?"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts, Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, Potions, and Muggle Studies." Kat clapped her hands together in excitement. "We'll probably have Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts together. That's good. I wonder what the other's are going to take. Hopefully we'll have at least one class with everyone." She looked away from Liz and over at the Gryffindor table where Remus, Sirius, and James were all taking a seat. Sirius' hair was still rather wet, but apparently he found food much more important than his 'precious' hair. Her eyes focused back on Remus as she spoke again. "I hope Remus and I have a few classes together. If not, we won't be able to spend much time together…" Her voice trailed off as Professor Flitwick arrived to make their schedules. At the Gryffindor table, Professor McGonagall had reached the others and was now making their schedules as well.

After Liz and Kat both had their schedules, they stood up and strode over to the Gryffindor table. They stood a few feet away while waiting for McGonagall to finish the schedules and leave. As soon as she moved on, the two of them sat down next to the boys. "Hurry up and eat," Liz ordered when seeing that James and Sirius were taking their time to eat. "You two took longer than I did, which is pretty amazing since I take forever." She glanced at her watch to see how much time was left before classes started.

"I didn't take longer than you," James retorted, giving Liz a dirty look. "It was Padfoot that took forever."

"Shut up," Sirius snapped through a mouthful of food. "I have more hair than you, so it took longer to clean."

"You moron," Liz said, looking up from her watch. "You should've just used magic. That's probably what Remus did after you had James come and get him, right?" She received a guilty look from Sirius, who quickly turned back to his food. James laughed and Remus nodded.

"It only took a few minutes to clean it all off, but he was worried that I missed some, so he spent about twenty minutes checking his hair." Remus rolled his eyes.

"Well that's just ridiculous," Liz said as she turned to look at her boyfriend. "Your lack of trust in your dear friend has depleted your time to eat. We have fifteen minutes to get to class and none of us have any of our books with us." Everyone, except for James and Sirius, stood up while she was speaking. "Come on. Get up. Both of you." Liz pulled Sirius up and away from the table. "It's just breakfast. You can pig out at lunch, or sneak down to the kitchen during a free period."

As the group headed out of the Great Hall, Gabby asked everyone what their classes were and they stopped to exchange schedules real quick. "Looks like we all have Defense Against the Dark Arts first," she said after they had finished examining each other's schedules. "I guess we'll meet back up at the classroom then." As they continued their way out of the Great Hall, Gabby and Liz stopped and turned to see what James and Sirius were doing. Both of them were standing still, staring at the food on the tables while whimpering. "Oh, knock it off! You two act like your parents starved you over the summer." Gabby rolled her eyes and went to grab James. While she pulled James out of the Great Hall, Liz went over and hopped on Sirius' back.

"Gabby, dearest, could you make sure someone grabs Sirius' stuff? He's kind of busy." Liz had a slight smirk on her face as she made Sirius carry her out of the Great Hall. Gabby smiled and nodded while wandering off with the rest of her Gryffindor friends. Kat had rushed off to Ravenclaw Tower, and by the time Liz and Sirius were entering, she was leaving.

"Why the hurry?" Sirius asked as Liz climbed down and dashed up the stairs to the girl's dormitory.

"Well, unlike some people, I don't want to be late," she remarked as she exited the common room, leaving Sirius alone with a pack of glowering Ravenclaws. Fortunately, Liz was back within a couple of minutes and pulling him out of the common room and down the stairs, off in the direction of their Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Outside of the classroom, they stopped beside their friends who had already arrived.

"Gabby, dear, I want to take a nap. Can't I just skip class? It's the first day and all they do is lecture us about how important our N.E.W.T.'s are. We already know they'll be difficult and they aren't until next year anyway. There's plenty of t-" James was cut off by the frown that had suddenly graced his girlfriend's face.

"Prongs, you can't afford to miss classes. Especially not the first ones." Remus heaved a sigh as Kat and Gabby both nodded in agreement.

"I dunno," Liz spoke up suddenly. "It's not like you're missing any-" The glares she quickly received from her friends, silenced her immediately. "All classes are important," she said sternly, trying to hide her sarcasm. Sirius chuckled for a second, along with James. He wrapped his arms around Liz and pulled her into a tight hug, still laughing slightly. A ray of Karma must have been shining on the two of them at the moment, because just as Sirius had wrapped his arms around Liz, Jessica and her posse arrived. The look of rage and jealousy on her face caused an uproar of laughter and fits of giggles to erupt from everyone standing there. While they were all laughing and being glared at by Jessica, their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher opened the classroom doors and ordered them to take a seat. The eight of them brushed past Jessica to enter the classroom. As Alex was passing her, she took the opportunity to slip a dungbomb into Jessica's bag. No one appeared to have noticed her doing this, because they all went silently to their seats. Sirius and Liz chose the table farthest from the front of the classroom and were joined by James and Gabby. Remus, Kat, Peter, and Alex quickly claimed the table directly in front of them.

"What's that smell?" they heard Jessica ask as her and her friends were taking their seats, far away from the others.

"Oh, I don't know, but it's absolutely ghastly. It smells like it's coming from your bag, Jessica. What on earth are you keeping in there?" They all had their noses scrunched up as they looked at each other, trying to figure out what their friend had in her bag.

Liz leaned over the table. "I saw that," she whispered to Alex, who turned around with a huge grin on her face. James and Sirius were trying to muffle their laughter as they watched the girls begin to pull things out of Jessica's bag.

"That, ladies, is the smell of a dungbomb. Padfoot and I know that smell rather well, don't we?" James spoke with a smirk while looking over at the girls. "You might want to take it out into the hallway before the smell gets even worse and fills the classroom." Sirius was nodding his head in agreement. As the girls all ran, squealing, into the hallway with Jessica's bag, a loud crunch erupted from Alex. Everyone in the classroom turned to look at her, but only her friends continued to stare at her until she realized that she was being watched.

"Fruitloops," she said, showing them a small bag of fruity cereal. "They're good. Would any of you like some?" She grinned and then turned to look at Peter. "Do you like fruitloops? It just occurred to me that I've never asked you before. In fact, I don't know if any of you like them, except for Liz. I know she doesn't like them."

"I certainly do," Peter stated, smiling fondly at her and reaching over to take a couple of fruit loops. He munched on them as Kat, Remus, James, and Sirius all claimed that they hadn't tried them before. They were each handed a few to try and as soon as Sirius went to put his into his mouth, a hand swatted them onto the floor.

"Liz!" Sirius cried out and looked at his girlfriend in desperation. "Why?"

"They're dreadful," she said shortly before turning her attention to the teacher who had started taking role call.

Alex snuck some more fruitloops to Sirius while Liz wasn't paying attention and he tried them only to find that he should have listened to Liz after all. He hid his disgusted face as the Professor began to drone on about their N.E.W.T.'s, the year's curriculum, behavior that would and wouldn't be tolerated in the classroom, and many other boring things.

"Well, James was right," Liz huffed at Gabby. "This is a complete waste of time. You can't blame him for falling asleep. Sirius is passed out too! Even Kat and Peter look like they're going to nod off any minute now. If every class is like this today, I'm going to run out of parchment to doodle on." She set her quill down and looked at the random things she had drawn on the paper in front of her. Alex also had a quill in her hand and seemed to be scribbling something onto her parchment. "Can you see why she's smirking?"

Gabby was sighing as Liz rambled, but turned her attention to Alex as soon as she was asked if she could see why their friend was smirking. "No, but it appears she's also doodling," Gabby pulled out her own quill, apparently no longer able to withstand the temptation to find something entertaining to do. As she was opening her ink pot, she saw a piece of parchment fly forward and smack Alex in the head. "Liz!"

"Shh!" Liz silenced Gabby as Alex turned to find out why a wad of parchment had just smacked her in the head. "Hey, why are you smirking?"

Liz's question seemed to surprise Alex, as if she wasn't expecting anyone to notice that she was smirking. "Well isn't it obvious? The professor looks exactly like that one American singer; Michael Jackson. He even sounds like him. Maybe I should ask him to sing a few notes for us." Everyone quickly covered their mouths to muffle the laughter that began as soon as Alex raised her hand. "Sir, could you sing us a song?" she asked when he looked over and saw her hand raised. The professor looked extremely confused, which just caused everyone in the classroom to start laughing along with the others.

As soon as everyone had calmed down, they let the professor get on with his speech. They sat through an hour and fifteen minutes worth of nonsense about tests that wouldn't occur until next year. They were all pleased with his explanation of some of the things they would be studying that year though, and it made up for a few minutes of the N.E.W.T's speech. When the bell rang for the end of that class, everyone rushed out of the classroom. The eight friends didn't stay together for very long before Gabby decided to shut James up by taking him to the kitchen to get food. Sirius' eyes lit up as he watched the two of them leave. He turned his gaze to Liz and gave her a pitiful look. "Oh, alright!" she took his hand and followed after Gabby and James.

"Peter, let's go play a game of Exploding Snaps!" Alex began to skip towards the Gryffindor common room, Peter right behind her.

Remus looked at Kat and shrugged. "To the library, I guess." He took her hand and the two of them walked towards the library. As they were passing a small closet, Kat suddenly gave his arm a tug and pulled him into it with her. That was the last time anyone saw them for nearly twenty minutes. It was just their luck that when they finally exited the closet, looking extremely disheveled, Liz and Sirius happened to go walking by. If they had noticed the time just a minute later, they would've escaped the wolf whistles that they earned from both of their friends. Both of their faces heated up with blushes and they tried to quickly walk away in order to head towards the Ancient Runes classroom.

"Nice going Moony!" Sirius hollered after the two as Liz giggled in an oddly girlish manner. When Kat and Remus had disappeared up a flight of stairs, Sirius turned and gave his girlfriend an odd look. "Uhm, why are you gigg-"

"Hurry! I'm going to be late for Divination!" Liz interrupted him as she grabbed his hand and pulled him through the corridors and up the many stairs to the Divination classroom. Panting, the two of them stood there for a few seconds before Liz put her hand on Sirius' shoulder. "Don't cause too much trouble without me," she ordered, a mischievous glow in her eyes. She pecked him on the side of the cheek and hurried up the ladder and into the classroom. While Sirius wandered back down the stairs, Liz went and took her seat beside Alex and Peter who had kindly saved her a spot. They were located in the center of the classroom, not too far from the front so they could still see their professor through the smoke, but not too far from the back that they would be targeted for the Daily Doom. Liz had entitled their professor's daily prophecies of misfortune for a student, the Daily Doom, and it had seemed to stick with everyone that took Divination.

While a student in Divination was being informed of the unfortunate accident that would kill their family owl, Gabby was sitting in Ancient Runes wondering where Kat and Remus were. Just when she was starting to worry that they would be late, the two of them entered the room and hurried over to the seats beside her. The bell rang just seconds later.

"I'm just dying to know what you two were up to during morning break!" Gabby exclaimed when noticing the disheveled state of their hair and robes. Remus, who was still red from their encounter with Liz and Sirius, practically turned into a tomato, while Kat's cheeks flared up again. "Ah, no need to tell me. Your faces," she paused and evaluated them. "Faces, robes, and hair all give it away." She giggled at the two, who had both managed to turn a bit darker red.

"Can you… Well, never mind. I was going to ask you to keep this from everyone, but Sirius and Liz saw us already. By lunch, everyone's going to be whispering about 'Remus and that girl' snogging during morning break." She heaved a sigh. "It's not that big of a deal though, right? I mean, it's normal…" Kat was trying desperately to defend herself, despite the fact that Gabby wasn't making any accusations against them.

"Look, I was just messing with you two. Everyone is glad you two are together, except for some of Remus' die hard fans. It would be hypocritical of me to say snogging was wrong, because James and I do it all the time. I think we all know that Sirius and Liz do it more than anyone, so you should've just told them to mind their own business." Gabby seemed to want to say more, but the Professor cleared his throat to get everyone's attention, so she stayed quiet. As everyone else in the room quieted down, Kat shot Remus a look that clearly said, 'Why couldn't we have been fortunate enough to run into her instead of Sirius and Liz?' Remus shrugged and they both turned to their professor. Just like their previous class, they spent the next hour and fifteen minutes being lectured about the dreadful N.E.W.T.'s and how important they were. All three of them listened intently, because they, unlike some of the others in their group of friends, actually cared about their classes and getting good marks. Everyone around them had begun chatting after a mere fifteen minutes of their Professor's speech. By the end of the class, half the class had fallen asleep and the other half had been passing notes and whispering to each other.

As the bell rang, dismissing the classes, Gabby, Kat, and Remus stood up and left the classroom to head towards the Great Hall for lunch. They were a bit surprised that they didn't run into any of their friends on the way there, but assumed that they were already sitting at their tables, eating. The morning had been rather crazy, and as they entered the Great Hall, they could sense that the afternoon and evening were just as likely to be the same way.