AN/: Next update coming on Friday. Thanks to all those people who reviewed me, it really means a lot to me. Got any funny situations you want the Marauders to go through? Tell me in a review or PM and I'll see if it fits in the story. I always love new ideas. :) Enjoy!
Oh my God. Kill. Me. Now.
History of Magic.
Professor Binns had a voice like a white noise machine. Completely atonal. Seriously, how did he not drive himself crazy with his own boring-ness? His vocal cords should be illegal.
Remus forced himself to take notes. How he did, he would never know. But there he was, jotting down bits of information on how some trolls migrated from Bulgaria eight hundred years ago. Seriously, who cares about stuff like that?
He watched Binns sway dangerously on the podium, his white hair barely clinging to his shiny head. It looked as though a breath of wind could knock him over and he would never get back up again. And yet, he trudged onward in his useless, suicidally dull speech.
Remus looked in the row in front of him and watched James doodle all over his parchment. He was drawing a deer.
"That's really good." Remus admired.
"Thanks." James muttered, drawing an intricate full moon above the stag's head.
Remus gulped. Was it hot in here? Yes, it did just get hotter in here. Hot hot hot.
"All right, Rem?" Peter asked from behind. Remus twitched. Peter must've noticed how he was sweating like a hot summer's day.
"Never better." He replied curtly, hoping the subject would be dropped.
"You sure?" Sirius asked, turning in his chair, "You look like you just saw your worst nightmare or something."
You don't say.
"Must've been the strawberries on the pancakes. Never did well with strawberries." Remus babbled.
"Geez, you'd think you'd've known better than to eat 'em, then." James chastised.
Remus coughed. "Yeah, you'd think I would've." Peter started fanning Remus briskly with his parchment.
And the bell rang. Remus jumped up like someone had stuck him with a hot poker. James folded his picture neatly and draped an arm around Sirius's shoulders.
"Here's to the next class not sucking the way that one just did." He chuckled as the four of them walked out the door.
"Here here." Peter piped up, bringing up the rear.
Their next class, turns out, was Transfiguration.
Oh, bugger.
"Transfiguration," Professor McGonagall began, walking tall through the rows of desks, "Is a fine art. A temperamental, dangerous art. It is not forgiving. If you wish to excel at Transfiguration, then you must give it your undivided attention. I am warning each and every one of you now. Any tomfoolery in my classroom with not be tolerated."
Remus heard James and Sirius whispering to each other to his left. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw James lift his wand and point it at the back of McGonagall's cape.
Acting swiftly, Remus swiped at him and pinned his wand to the table.
"What're you doing?" he hissed at him.
"Having a bit of fun, look."
Remus looked, and he almost gagged.
There was a gaping hole in the back of McGonagall's robes. And she was completely oblivious.
"Are you crazy?" Remus chastised, swatting the back of James's head. "You'll get us expelled!"
"Oooh, look at those little cupids on her panties." Sirius giggled.
"If the students in the back row would be most kind as to shut their mouths." McGonagall barked at them, still blissfully in the dark as to her... ehm... problem. "Then we shall continue on to the first task. If each student would please take a match from my desk, then you may begin changing it into a needle."
By now, all the students in the classroom had realized their professor was prancing about with her underwear in full sight. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Some students were holding back laughter. Others averted their eyes shamefully. A few of them were oogling. They all noticed, but nobody wanted to be the one to break the news to the dangerous-looking professor.
McGonagall looked at them expectantly.
"Well, buck up, we don't have all day." She said curtly, sitting down at the desk and pushing the box of matches forward.
Somewhat erratically, the students stood and shuffled towards the desk and gingerly removed matches from the box. James and Sirius, Remus noticed, both had excellent poker faces. Peter, on the other hand, was redder than a tomato and was staring at his feet.
By the end of the lesson, Remus had a perfect sewing needle lying on his desk. James's needle had melted into a puddle. Sirius's match had caught fire (big surprise there). Peter's hadn't changed at all. McGonagal marched proudly up and down the aisles, her knickers on display for all to see. Remus gulped and blushed a little when she came to observe his progress.
"Your name?" She asked Remus as she picked up the needle and turned it over in her hand.
"Remus Lupin." He coughed awkwardly.
"Very nicely done. Ten points to Gryffindor."
Despite himself, Remus felt very proud. He smiled at James who was poking the silvery mess with his wand.
"Bad day?" he asked.
"Bloody stupid class, this is." James growled bitterly.
Sirius gaped at Remus's needle. "How did you do that?"
"You were holding your wand wrong." Remus remarked, taking Peter's match and giving it to Sirius. Remus took Sirius's hand and his friend started a little. Remus moved it so it was grasping the wand correctly. Sirius muttered the incantation. The match turned silver, but conspicuously lacked a point. Sirius cursed rather loudly.
"Language, Mr. Black! Five points from Gryffindor."
James, thoroughly bored, decided to shake things up a little. He raised his hand.
McGonagall stared at him sharply. Little warning lights flashed in Remus's head. Danger. Danger.
"Yes, Mister..."
"Potter. James Potter."
"What is it, Mister Potter?"
"I can see through your robes."
There was a silence so heavy most boulders would be jealous.
"I beg your pardon?" McGonagal barked.
"Your robes have a hole in them, look." Frank Longbottom added helpfully and pointed.
McGonagall did look. She turned a deep, tomato red and mended the hole swiftly with a flick of her wand. Apparently, she still hadn't realized it was James himself who had pulled the charm.
"Ahhh...hem. Thank you Mister Potter, though in the future I would appreciate a more discreet method telling me." she quipped, ever the professional.
"In the future?" Sirius laughed, "You plan on making that a regular occurrence? Because as lovely as that would be, I think it would be better if you weren't wearing old lady underpants."
McGonagall glared daggers. Sirius. Was. DEAD.
"Detention, Mr. Black! And twenty points from Gryffindor!"
"Worth it." Sirius whispered to Remus under his breath when McGonagall had turned to the rest of the class.
"If I ever find out who did this," she began, "Then I shall personally see to it that whoever it is is expelled immediately."
She surveyed the classroom for a long, tense second, before returning to her paperwork.
Remus hung his head in his hands. He needed chocolate.
*Scene Change*
James, Sirius, Remus and Peter were charging down the corridor, five minutes late for Potions and thoroughly lost. Needless to say, tempers were running high.
"We're on the fifth floor!" Sirius barked, rounding a corner at lightning speed and skidding into a suit of armor with a clatter. The suit of armor, unhappy with being disturbed, cuffed Sirius on the ear and sent him on his way
"No, this is the third floor, we just passed that tapestry of Urgus the Unhinged, remember?" James called out. He ran for a staircase but backpedaled furiously when it started to move right in front of him.
"Fifth floor!" Sirius snapped, rubbing his ear.
"Third floor!" James pushed him lightly. Sirius pushed back, harder.
"Fifth floor!"
"Third floor!"
Sirius shoved James bodily and he was rammed into a tapestry. To their great surprise, James fell through the tapestry and disappeared with a cry.
Oops.
"JAAAMES!" Sirius yelled hysterically, clutching at the tapestry's fringe, "I killed him!"
"No, you dunce, I'm all right." James's voice sounded as though it were coming through a tunnel. "There's a staircase behind here."
"Where do you think this goes?" Remus asked, peering behind the cloth.
"I think my cousin told me about this once." Said Peter, going in after James, "We're on the third floor right? This leads to the dungeons." Peter slipped behind the rug.
"Is this the same cousin who put doxie droppings in your breakfast?" Remus asked warily.
"No time to chat." Sirius said, diving after Peter and taking Remus by the wrist and heaving him into the shaft. Remus gagged a little as the scent of stagnant air and things that had been dead for a very long time hit him. Sirius had lit up the tip of his wand and was pulling him along, firmly dragging him down the stairs. Up ahead, he could see Peter and James leading the way into the black nothing. It surprised Remus how dark it was. How very, very dark.
"If this is the wrong way, I'm going to kill you Pete." He called out.
"Not a fan of dark tunnels are you?" Sirius joked lightly.
No, he wasn't. He most definitely wasn't.
"I found something!" Peter, who was now in the lead, called out to his friends.
They pooled at the bottom of the staircase. Blocking any further progress was an infuriatingly solid brick wall.
James cursed.
"Now we have to go back up!" he groaned. "Nice going, Pete."
Peter hung his head like a kicked puppy.
Remus, feeling like they were missing something, pressed his body against the cold rock experimentally. Taking his hand out of Sirius's, he started rubbing the bricks, one by one.
Sirius coughed, looking a little flustered. "Hem... Remus... Why're you molesting that wall?"
Remus snorted. "Shush, I'm figuring out how to get through."
He took out his wand and started tapping the bricks one by one. James groaned.
"This could take forever!"
"Then help me!"
They stood there for at least three minutes, until every last brick had been tapped, rubbed on, talked to and tickled. Remus scratched his head. Peculiar, peculiar.
"Maybe there's a password." he suggested.
"Uuugh, to hell with this!" James roared, kicking the wall furiously.
The floor beneath them shifted.
Oh S***.
They fell right through the ground.
"Aaaaaaah!" They chorused.
Remus had the breath taken right out of him as Sirius landed on his chest like a sack of potatoes. James, screaming like a little girl, landed on top of Sirius. Peter, in turn, landed on James. Remus whirred and coughed, trying to wiggle out from underneath the dog-pile.
"Mmmphrrrrnnn." he admonished.
"I think I broke my ass." Peter moaned, falling off of James's head.
"What just happened?" Sirius slurred his speech, rolling off of Remus and curling like a hedgehog on the ground.
"Apparently, 'To hell with this' was the password." Remus suggested after his lungs started working again.
"Bloody stupid password." James muttered, turning his head to the side a little. His neck creaked dangerously.
Remus looked up and saw the hole in the ceiling that had enabled their rather violent entry to the dungeons. It was closing rapidly. He sat up and rubbed his sore ribs.
"Potions Class." He reminded his friends.
James cursed again. He jumped up, fell over and stood up again. He got his bearings quickly.
"This way!" He ran to his left, shoes pounding. The four of them burst into the Potions classroom, dusty, sweaty and very out-of-breath.
Professor Slughorn stared at them for a moment in surprise.
"Ah, there you four are, I was beginning to think you weren't coming. Lost weren't you? Yes, that happens all the time to first years. I won't take any points off, it happened to me my first day too. Go on, take your seats. The instructions are on the board."
Remus felt fingers moving in his hair. He turned around quickly and saw Sirius looking funny.
"Spiderweb on your head." he mumbled, holding out the wispy cobweb.
They all sat down together and pulled the supplies out of their bags.
James swore lightly as a dried lizard eyeball he was holding slipped out of his hand and rolled into the row in front of him. A delicate-looking red-haired girl bent down and picked it up for him. As she turned around to look at James, time itself seemed to stop and stare.
"Did you drop this?" she asked, holding out the eye.
Boom. Fireworks.
James gaped like a beached catfish for a a second.
"Yes, that's mine." he croaked,"Thank you. What's your name?"
"Lily Evans. What's yours?"
"James Potter." He replied, unconsciously ruffling his hair to try and make it more messy. It didn't really need it.
Remus almost heard wedding bells. Almost.
"Nice to meet you." She replied, completely uninterested, before turning around and ignoring him.
James stared openly at the back of Lily's head.
"I. Am. In. Love." He whispered to Sirius.
Sirius, who had been busy measuring crushed dragon talons, gave Lily a brief once-over. He nodded appreciatively.
"Fine girl, she is." He whispered.
"Paws off." James reprimanded as he took out his cauldron.
"Whatever, man."
Remus rolled his eyes and started on the potion.
Class, in the end, became a rather explosive disaster.
Peter was abysmal at Potions. Actually, that was an understatement. He sucked. Big time.
The last thing Remus heard before it happened was James scream, "NO, Peter, that's fireweed!". There was a gooey bang. Everyone within a ten foot radius of Peter's cauldron was drenched in vile green stuff that looked like vomit.
"Everyone stay calm now! We'll have this sorted out in just a moment!" Professor Slughorn called out.
Indeed, the opposite of calm happened, students were screaming, running about and dancing in place like rabid pixies. Almost immediately, any student with botched potion on their bodies developed a rather extreme case of the chicken pox. Remus had somehow been spared from the destruction, but was now plagued with a very itchy Sirius Black, who was scratching himself all violently and jumping in place like a kangaroo on speed.
"Aagnnnn... So... Itchy..." he grunted.
"Stop scratching! You'll only make it worse." Remus scolded as he tried to rub dittany on him.
Slughorn shuffled rapidly about the classroom and cleaned up the mess quickly. In the end, half the students were sent to the hospital wing, splotchy faces lining up to file out the door. Sirius was spared by Remus's dittany and James had somehow vanished all of his own chicken pox. Peter ended up being removed from the classroom on a stretcher with so many spots he looked like a leopard.
"Yes, yes." Slughorn tittered nervously now that order had been restored, "That happens occasionally when making potions. Just a reminder, be very careful and don't ever mix fireweed with snake fangs."
James, who had been working with Peter, now had to start all over on his potion. His day had obviously taken a rather embarrassing turn for the worst and he was feeling as though he had failed in impressing the beautiful girl in front of him. Indeed, she wasn't paying any attention to him at all. She was talking to a kid in Slytherin, one Severus Snape.
James glared at Snape, fiercely jealous, and stirred his potion angrily.
"Why would she want to talk to Snape? He's nothing but a greasy-nosed git." James spat. The fire under his cauldron flared dangerously.
"Watch out." Sirius jumped to his feet and pushed James back from the flame.
"I'm sure Snape is a perfectly nice boy." Remus remarked fairly.
"Oh, come on, who would name their kid Severus? I bet his parents hate him." Sirius snickered.
Snape, it turns out, heard him say that.
"What's your problem?" He asked silkily, eyeing Sirius coldly.
"You." James hissed.
"Go to hell, Potter." Snape shook his head in a dismissive fashion and pointedly ignored him.
Remus rubbed his temples. All this stress was bad for his sinuses.