Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. It all belongs to the marvelous J. K. Rowing (and Warner Brothers)
AN: I know that it's been forever since I updated the story but here is finally the next chapter. I just got up this morning and felt like writing it…. So… here it is!
And I have to clear something up; James accepted the bet because his pride clouded his vision and he doesn't necessarily act like the smartest person around Snape.
"Do something, Moony! Do something!" Sirius yelled as he shook the werewolf fervently. "Where's Prongs? And why is there a frog where he used to be? And now he doesn't have any clothes and we both know what happened last time Prongs went around Hogwarts without clothes!"
Remus shuddered remembering the experience.
"What do we do, Moony?" Peter echoed as tears started to fall down his chubby cheeks.
Remus sighed, "Both of you need to calm down!"
"We're gonna die! We're gonna die!" Sirius bellowed as he flung himself onto the couch and started to cry profusely which made Peter weep any harder.
Remus started to massage his temples. He silently waited for them to quiet down.
30 minutes later
….no such luck. For one of the first times in his life the quiet marauder raised his voice. "Quiet!"
The other two human mauraders stopped their mourning and turned around.
"What is wrong with you two? I've been trying to explain the story, and you won't let me!"
"Moony, quiet down. You might wake the rest of the dorm." Sirius whispered.
"ME?" Remus shouted. "We two are the ones weeping like Moaning Myrtle! But it doesn't matter anyway, I did a 'Muffliato' spell the second Padfoot started his third verse of 'Where is my Jamesy-poo?'"
"Hey! It was a good song!"
Before Remus could reply a redheaded girl walked through the portrait hole. She glared suspiciously at the three of them. "Where's Potter? He was supposed to be with me helping me patrol the halls! Peeves made another mess and I had to clean it up all by myself! What are all of you doing here this late anyway?"
"Nothing," they all replied in unison.
"Sure," she replied not trusting them in the slightest, "And whose frog is that?" She walked over to pick it up, but Sirius intercepted her.
"It's James' frog, he told us to look after it."
"Where is Potter?"
"Ummmm… he's… on a date!" Sirius beamed at his moment of true brilliance.
"That hypocrite! He just asked me out and just hours later he's having a midnight meeting with some sl… Anyway, just tell Potter that I'm very disappointed in him and I'm reporting this to the headmaster first thing in the morning!" She stormed off up the stairs to the girls' dormitory and slammed the door behind her.
Sirius sighed and turned back towards them only to be attacked by the frog. "Get it off!" Sirius roared. "Get it off!" Peter squealed as he attempted to help.
Remus groaned before gathering as much air as he could into his lungs and yelled "QUIET!"
The whole room became quiet for the first time in an hour and Remus walked over to Sirius and scraped the frog off his face. "This frog is James, Sirius! The potion that he drank was a transfiguration potion that Slughorn wanted me to prepare! It's the Calunios Potion. It turns any human into a frog!"
"But you don't take potions anymore."
"Yes I do! I might not be in the advanced class with Lily and Snape, but I do take the regular NEWT course!"
"Well then make a potion to turn him back!"
"That's the thing! I don't know how! The antidote is far more complicated then the regular potion itself. Only a real master knows how to fix it. Not just a master in potions, but a master in transfiguration!"
The room was still. No one had ever seen Moony yell like that without him being in his werewolf form. Not to mention no one knew how to deal with the problem at hand.
Suddenly Sirius got a look of dawning. "Minnie!" He took James out of Remus's hands and ran towards McGonagall's room.
"WAKE UP!" Sirius pounded on the door.
The door slammed open and Sirius was greeted with a sight that made him scream like a little girl and shield his eyes.
"BLACK!" McGonagall shrieked with her face covered in a green mask that made her look more or less like a strangely shaped troll "What the hell are you doing waking me up in the middle of the night?"
"Please, Proffessor," Remus pleaded, "We have a problem. We need your help and probably Slughorn's too. I had to make the Calunios Potion in class and James accidentally drank it."
McGonagall gasped as Sirius handed her James, who seemed to snuggle up to McGonagall in an attempt to get her to sympathize with him. She handed the green marauder back to Sirius. "Just give me a moment." Took out her wand, did a nonverbal spell and her nightdress quickly changed into her normal teaching garbs.
"Ummm… professor," Peter whispered. "You might want to wash your face off."
The teacher gave him a cold glare that would put Severus Snape in his place, did another spell and the gunky covering was gone.
888
Slughorn sat relaxingly on a fluffy couch in his chamber reading a copy of 'How to Have Young Witches and Wizards Meet Their Full Potential' when a sharp rap came at the door.
He groaned. The Slytherin head of house knew who that knock belonged too. Whenever there was an emergency staff meeting they always sent Minerva down to get him. He heaved his bulk off the couch and opened the door, only to be surprised by not only Minerva but three students and a frog.
"We have a problem, Horace. It seems Mr. Potter wasn't paying attention and drank Mr. Lupin's Calunios Potion which you assigned to him.
The potions teacher looked concerned, "Dear, dear, this certainly is a problem… I don't have any antidote on hand at the moment."
"Well then make on!" Sirius commanded as he stepped closer to the balding teacher.
"I'm afraid it's not that simply, my boy. The most I can do is make a temporary remedy. The actual antidote takes a month to create."
"Well do you have enough of the temporary remedy to last for a month?" Remus questioned.
"Well it's simple to make so it's not a problem. But the thing is, is that it only works of for 16 hours of the day. So if he took it at 6:00 every morning, it would only work til 10:00 PM."
"Well that doesn't sound that bad…" Remus reasoned. "I mean no one would see him then anyway and we'll make sure that no one comes in our dorm after 10:00…"
Sirius however looked a bit more panicky "But what if some emergency happens that makes everyone evacuate? What if Moaning Murtle tries to take over Hogwarts? What if Peeves gathers the house-elves in a revolt against the students? What if someone puts a spell on all the females in Hogwarts that causes them to go through PMS simultaneously? And then people will go, where's James? Where's James? I mean we all know how the females will want to attack James first!"
"Black, somehow I doubt that's ever going to happen," McGonnagal moaned as she rubbed her temples.
Slughorn meanwhile had gotten out a cauldron and was mixing up the temporary remedy. "Now," he said calmly, "You have to remember that you can only take one of these a day or there will be serious repercussions. Is that clear?"
"I'll have repercussions? What?" The dog-like marauder joked right before his head of house slapped him on the back of the head.
"Don't worry. I'll make sure he only takes one a day and at the right time." Remus confidently stated. It was his job to take over this being the most responsible of the marauders.
A few minutes later it was ready. Slughorn handed a vial to Remus. "I'll give you a new one each day after class, just make sure you wait until everyone else is out of the room."
Remus nodded.
"Now I want all of you to get to bed as swiftly as possible. I'm going to talk with Professor Slughorn for a while to discuss Mr. Potter's condition. Take Mr. Potter with you and go back to your dorm-room and head straight to bed no short-cuts." The Gryffindor head of house snapped.
Sirius was starting to get the strangest suspicions that maybe the professor didn't have the utmost confidence in him. "Come on Minnie, don't you trust us?"
It seemed that these suspicions were true because she glared at him and repeated herself "NO shortcuts."
The mauraders left the room and were about to turn the corner out of the dungeons when they ran into one certain slimy git as James would call him.
"Oh look, it's Potter's little cronies. What are you doing down her so late at night and why aren't you with that sniveling coward of a leader?" Severus Snape sneered.
Holding Sirius back from punching the greasy boy, Remus coolly replied, "We came down with Professor McGonagall for your information on a subject we're not allowed to discuss and James is up in the common room planning another attempt to ask out Lily Evans. What are you doing, Snape?"
"That Mudblood isn't even worthy of Potter," the Slytherin scoffed which caused the frog to almost jump out of Sirius' death grip. "For your information I was going to ask Slughorn a question about potions, he said we could contact him at all times and this question's been nagging at me for a while."
This sounded a bit suspicious but Remus knew that it wouldn't be smart to prod. They were about to leave when suddenly Snape noticed the frog.
"What's with the frog?"
"What's with the homework question, almighty potions master?" Sirius mocked.
Snape just smirked and replied. "Well I guess we're at a standstill. But be warned. I will find out." He walked past the group with his black cloak bellowing behind him.
Sirius clenched his James-less fist and looked like he was about to attack but Remus gave him a threatening look and whispered, "It isn't worth it Padfoot."
Sirius snorted and they all headed back to the common room. It seemed that by the time they were half-way there Sirius had forgotten the moment with Snape because he was singing a very loud rendition of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.'
Not taking McGonnagal's advice in the slightest, the maurader's (or mainly Sirius) found every possible hallway that might, or might not take them to the common room. So three hours later they finally arrived at the common room and it was already 5:45.
Remus groaned. He had hoped to get a little sleep because of the Defense against the Dark Arts test he had today but that was hopeless. "Well we might as well change into another one of our robes and get ready for class."
Sirius grinned and bonded up the stairs in front of them they all got changed and were back in the common room at 5:59. They all sat down in front of the fireplace as Remus tipped the potion into the amphibian's mouth. Instantly the frog morphed into a frazzled and exhausted-looking James Potter.
And not a moment too soon. Footsteps came from the girls' dormitory and a certain Lily Evans entered the room in full robes ready for the day of classes with a potions book hugged to her chest. She took one look at James and glared.
"You look tired, Potter. Have fun with your latest toy? It looks like you didn't get any sleep last night."
"I swear Evans, I didn't…"
"Don't even bother making up a story, you filthy hypocrite," She then headed back up the stairs to the dormitory.
"I hate you, Padfoot."
AN: There you go! So how do you like it? I think I liked the first chapter better, but this one was to just push the story along….
Oh by the way, I know that they probably don't have 'Advanced' classes and 'Regular' classes but I had to put Remus in potions without him being in class with Snape and Lily for reasons that will be revealed later on in the story
Please review! The more I get, the more likely I'm not going to forget that this story exists and take months to update it…