I am still alive. My muse is actually quite powerful; it's the time to embrace her that I seem to lack. Despite Hermione's woes, I dream of a time turner sometimes. Don't you?
I have planned A LOT of things for this story out, and there are reasons (reasons!) for both Tonks's existence in this time and Dumbledore's actions, I promise.
Chapter Two – A Way to Get a Little Wet
"I still can't believe you shagged her," James said, his voice squeaking in the way it hadn't done since the end of Third Year. Somehow, the entire Gryffindor table seemed to hear him over the roar of the great feast, with one Lily Evans in particular shooting him a sour look before going back to talking to her friends. James frowned.
"Isn't this just great?" he spat out. "Padfoot shags a bloody muggle and I get judged for it. Moony becomes a goddamned Prefect and I get bloody a lecture on making things easy for him. I swear, for being my mates, you both are making Evans give me the worst kind of attention!"
Sirius just barked a laugh and Remus smirked as he served himself some more potatoes. "I wasn't aware that there was a bad kind of attention from Lily as far as you are concerned," he said before sighing down at the badge on his robes. "However, I do agree with you that this is . . ."
"Insane?!" James supplied when his now-Prefect friend seemed unable to think of anything to say.
"I'm happy Remus got it," Peter chimed in. "Because otherwise it would have been me."
Even James, who had been in an uncharacteristically foul mood, had to smile at that. "That definitely would've been worse, Wormtail."
"No it wouldn't've," Sirius insisted, speaking with a mouthful of food, as if he weren't raised with absurdly strict manners and/or any sense of decorum. "Wormtail doesn't know where I get my Firewhiskey."
Remus's face paled. "Oh, Merlin, am I supposed to keep you sober?"
Sirius grinned cheekily and waved a chicken leg in front of his friend's face. "Yep. And you have to keep me from being a twat in general, so overall I'd say your life is about to become unbearable." Remus dropped his head onto the table.
He muffled something into his elbow that sounded suspiciously like, "Why did he do this to me?"
James sniggered into hand. "Honestly, you're going to kill him, Pads. Don't worry, Remus; we really are happy for you, for the most part." Here James shot another look at Lily, but she really didn't seem to paying him any more mind. "That stuff Evans said to me on the train, about it being a big honor and all, she was right."
"Weren't your Mum and Dad proud when they found out?" Peter added kindly, not seeming to notice he had icing from the cake on his nose.
Remus sat up. "I don't know. It's complicated with them, sometimes," was all he said, and his friends did not push. Despite the fact that the fifth year Gryffindor boys seemed to know absolutely everything about each other (even the disgusting bits, really), Remus still seemed persistently evasive on some matters. He sighed again. "I just wish I didn't have all this pressure. The OWLs, the Prefect meetings, you lot being the filthy animals that you are –"
James and Sirius both grinned broadly at this. Over the summer, they had both managed to hold their forms longer than ever before. Even Peter nearly had the whole thing down, though getting rid of his tail seemed to trip him up sometimes.
"-And now Sirius has discovered sex. It's all going to get worse from here on out."
"Ohhhhh," Sirius waggled his eyebrows, "it's going to get very much worse, Moony, I promise you that."
"You lot weren't even there!" James pulled at his already difficult hair. His family had invited Sirius with them to Paris, and that was apparently where the whole ordeal had gone down. "Even without understanding a bloody word they were saying, I still felt like I needed to bathe after listening to them talk."
Sirius seemed to take this as a compliment and just smiled once more before pulling a piece of parchment and quill from his satchel.
"Homework already?" Remus asked, knowing that that was simply not the case at all, and that true to his gut, his life was about to become all the more complicated. Sirius ignored him and merely began writing in familiar aristocratic handwriting. Remus couldn't see what his friend was doing, but he knew he really didn't want to.
James didn't seem to know what his best friend was writing either, but he sent Remus a look that seemed both apologetic and amused. "Sorry, mate," he offered. "If it's any consolation, the prank that's about to happen is quite mundane. Not up to our usual standards at all."
Remus sighed – again – and all he could muster was, "No one's going to get hurt, are they?"
"Of course not!" James said, perhaps a bit too quickly. He furrowed his brow. "Well, not too badly, if they do."
Peter was the one to peek, stretching over the table to the handsome boy's parchment across from him. "It's a list of names," he said.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Sirius!" James cried, ripping the paper from his friend's hands. He scanned it quickly. Sirius tilted back in his seat and practically preened. Remus felt the urge to give him a good shove.
"Whaddya think, Mister Prongs?" Sirius asked after a moment.
James huffed and picked up the quill and began scratching things out. "You know she's never even going to speak to you, and you forgot Mildred from Ravenclaw."
"Oh, right," Sirius said thoughtfully, rubbing at his chin, which sported his extremely pathetic attempt at a beard.
"I don't get it," Peter said, looking back and forth between James and Sirius.
"Peter," said Remus, who had already gauged the situation at hand, and who was really fighting his sigh this time, "I do believe that Padfoot is devising a list of conquests."
"Conquests?" Peter asked before he seemed to realize. "Ohhhh." He was blushing furiously.
"Seriously?" Lily said, turning in her seat and frowning at the boys. "I do hope you have the sense not to go after any of the girls in Gryffindor. Or any of the girls younger than you." She pointed her finger at Sirius, but her eyes were glued to James.
Remus anticipated Sirius's pun-ny response, and made to warn his fellow Prefect, but James cut him off. "I always knew you were obsessed with us, Evans. Why don't you just admit it?"
The poor girl's face seemed as red as her hair. "You know what? Never you mind. It's none of my business if girls are stupid enough to fall for whatever shite Sirius feeds them –"James exhaled then, as this was perhaps the first time he had heard Lily curse "- but I am not going to let you drag Remus into this depravity."
In all honesty, Remus wasn't offended by the list – as far as he was concerned, most of the girls would probably be happy to fool around with Sirius, as he was easily very charming and good-looking and had kissed and told often enough that Remus could guess that it would be fun for all parties involved. But these thoughts weren't very chivalrous, so he kept them to himself. Unlike James, he did not fancy being on the end of Lily's wrath.
And James did so seem to fancy it.
"Let Padfoot have his fun, Evans! It's not like I'm the one making a list." Here he batted his eyelashes. "You know you're the only one for me!"
Lily growled. "Shut it, Potter." She stood to gather her things. "Just leave the new girl out of it," was the last thing she said before storming off.
"New girl?" Peter mused.
"She's going to miss all the fun!" James practically wailed.
"Speaking of fun," Sirius said as he gathered the parchment and rolled it all up. He said nothing else, and Remus really thought this was for the best because he could already guess that whatever was about to happen would ruin everything on the table before them.
It was the small drip of water that he felt on the top of his head that really made him worry. The kind of drip so innocuous that you could almost believe it hadn't really happened after all. As he looked around, he saw that several of the students seemed to inspecting their surroundings, as well.
McGonagall had jumped to her feet, as if she was all ready to march over and give the Marauders – as they had started to call themselves, which was quite obnoxious when you thought about it, but Remus figured that if anyone could get away with being obnoxious, it was James and Sirius, surely – and Sirius merely smiled at her. "Minnie's at the very bottom of my list, you know," he said with a laugh.
"If you shag her, I will give you every galleon in my vault," James said, his former mood now fully replaced with his typical humor.
"Don't make promises you can't keep, my dear friend."
"If you manage to pull it off, Sirius, the story alone will be worth the gold."
"Be sure you say that after I tell you about pulling off ol' Minnie's knickers."
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Remus said. "You two do know that I am supposed to take house points away for bad behavior, yes?"
James seemed to contemplate this. "If Minnie shags Sirius, I'd rather say she's the one who deserves the trouble. Wouldn't you agree, Mister Padfoot?"
"Too right, Mister Prongs. I am but a mere innocent school child, and the cat would've been the one seducing me."
"Can we stop talking about this?" Peter asked, looking ill. "I want to be able to get rid of the mental pictures."
James laughed, but Sirius was the one who noticed Peter's eyes glued to the Hufflepuff table. "Is that her?" he asked good-naturedly.
"Would have to be," Peter said. "I know everyone." And it was true. Peter had a knack for memorizing detail.
That seemed rather handy, Remus thought, as this girl did not seem particularly detailed. She was sitting alone, staring at her plate and sighing. She looked as normal and non-interesting as one person could get. Neither ugly nor pretty – not Sirius's type at all, as he always went for the beautiful ones, or the cutesy ones, or the ones who were so weird that they seemed striking. She seemed the kind of unassuming person Remus thought himself to be, if he hadn't been so (mis)fortunate as to get sorted with two absolutely mad attention-grabbing wizards.
"She seems boring," Sirius declared, proving Remus truly did know his friend. "And a Hufflepuff at that! James put her at the bottom of the list, underneath Minnie."
"You put the list away already, you dolt," James said.
"Oh, right."
And then there was thunder. And then came the rain.
The students began to shriek and laugh in equal turns, some conjuring various items to keep their hair dry. Remus braved a glance at McGonagall, who was fuming, but Professor Dumbledore seemed amused from underneath his umbrella.
"What a lovely way for our students to practice Transfiguration, wouldn't you agree, Minerva?" he said, his voice somehow carrying through storm. The headmaster sent a wink Remus's way, and suddenly he didn't feel quite so terrified of the Prefect badge on his chest.
James and Sirius were too busy dancing around in the rain like idiots, cloaks soaked to the bone and now wearing heavily on them to notice, but Peter nudged Remus.
"Look at the girl," he said, and Remus had to admit, unlike most at her table, who seemed a bit nervous, the new girl was staring up at the enchanted ceiling as if the rain was the best thing that had happened to her at Hogwarts so far.
