A/N: Thanks for the review guys!

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Taking Butterbeer from Badgers

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"Extra points if you hit a first year, Mary."

Mary, Alice and myself are sitting on a moving staircase, our legs dangling through the balustrade. We've spent the whole afternoon swinging over the Entrance Hall below with a stack of flour bombs I confiscated off a third year Gryffindor. So far, Mary hasn't hit one single student. Her aim is as shocking as her Transfiguration skills.

The best bit is that no one's even attempted to stop us. The caretaker Pringle is still busy cleaning up the mess in the Great Hall and even he was free to pursue us, the fact that the staircase keeps moving makes us a difficult target.

"Do you guys want to commandeer the prefects bathroom tonight?" I ask the two witches as Mary's flour bomb bursts off the head of a suit of armour, spraying flour all over the main foyer. It coats the room like a downpour of powdered snow. Even though he doesn't technically have a face, I can tell by the way he looks up at us and shakes his fist that the suit of armour is disgruntled. Excellent.

"But Lily, you have prefect duties with Remus tonight," Mary says dreamily, squeezing her face between the bannisters. Mary has quite a vigorous crush on Remus. Not only does he give her butterflies in her stomach, he gives her unicorns in her stomach. Romantic, stampeding, horny unicorns, if you catch my drift.

That being said, Mary develops crushes quite easily. Once she had a crush on the Giant Squid just because he accidentally brushed her with a tentacle when she was sitting by the Black Lake. She went on and on for a whole week about how mysterious and misunderstood he was.

Then she got over the Giant Squid when she developed a crush on the Lachlan the Lanky statue instead. She made us take the longest route to DADA for months just so she could walk pass his statue and check out his literally chiselled features.

"Fudge prefect duties. I don't want to be a prefect anymore," I tell them while lobbing a flour grenade at Bertha Jorkins as she waddles down below.

"Oh brainwave!" Alice exclaims. "Word on the corridor is, Amos Diggory has got butterflies in his stomach for Dorcas Meadowes."

"Bit off topic Alice, but that's nice," I say.

Alice shakes her head. "Wait, listen. So apparently prior to our little weather malfunction in the Great Hall, the Hufflepuff table was abuzz with Amos's plans tonight to impress Dorcas."

"Go on," I say, gaining the tiniest morsel of interest. The Hufflepuff table did seem particularly stimulated at lunchtime. I just assumed they'd overdosed on jellybeans again. Hufflepuffs are simple creatures with simple (some might say stupid) pleasures.

"He's going to try and impress Dorcas by having an after curfew party in one of classrooms on the fourth floor," Alice pauses for dramatic effect, "fully stocked with Butterbeer."

"Are you saying we should crash Amos's shindig?" Mary asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

Alice's face contorts with disgust. "Urgh, no. And hang out with Hufflepuffs all night? I'd rather hang out with Fwoopers. What I'm saying is Lily, you should go on prefect duty and use your all mighty prefect powers to confiscate Amos's Butterbeer supply."

My eyes widen with delight as I catch on to Alice's devious plan. "So we can have our own party…Alice you genius. You should get an order of Merlin, First Class for that brain of yours."

A mischievous grin pulls her lips across her round face. "It'll be like taking sweets from a baby."

"More like taking Butterbeer from badgers," I say, elbowing her playfully in the ribs. Below us, Apollyon Pringle skulks into the main foyer. Even from up here I can see him trembling with rage when he spies the bed of flour residue. Not wanting to have tonight's festivities ruined by a detention we decide to move on from our flour bombing station.

As we walk along the corridor, I see a first year ahead of us stuffing a Chocolate Frog into his tiny mouth. I dig into my pocket, and pull out my disregarded prefect badge (which is now coated in fluff and hardened flobberworm mucus) and reattach it to my robe.

"Oi, I'm confiscating this," I tell the first year as I pinch his second untouched Chocolate Frog from his fingers. His chocolate smeared mouth widens in surprise.

"But Chocolate Frogs aren't against the rules," he stammers.

"There's been a change of rules," I warn him in a dangerous tone. Really, talking back to a prefect. The audacity of these little midgets. "I'm confiscating this as well," I say as an afterthought, pulling a particularly nifty looking quill out of his leather satchel. I hand the Chocolate Frog to Alice and the quill to Mary. Both witches look delighted with their spontaneous gifts.

"I'm going to go send a letter and have a shower. What are you guys going to do?" I ask my friends.

"Study for the-" Mary starts to say but she stops herself when I start slowly shaking my head.

"Use up the rest of these?" She corrects herself, holding up a small pile of left over flour bombs. I nod approvingly.

"Lily, what are you going to do about Remus?" Alice asks. Despite his position of authority I know Remus isn't opposed to a bit of healthy rule breaking every now and again. Still, he has this niggling thing called a conscience, which might make him disapprove of my plan to abuse my prefect power in order to rob Diggory blind. I used to have a conscience too, but it got too hard to uphold so I ditched it.

"Don't worry," I say with a sly grin. "I know exactly what I'm going to do about Remus."

Hours later I find Remus waiting at the Boris the Bewildered statue. He looks slightly miffed. His brown hair is still ruffled from the downpour in the Great Hall earlier.

"Lily," he says warily as I approach him.

"Remus," I say, copying his grave tone. 'How are we today?"

"Confused," he says.

"Seems to be a contagious emotion lately," I say airily.

"Yes, well I'm trying to pinpoint the source of it," he says observing me with a shrewd expression as I deject a wad of Drooble's Best Blowing gum from my mouth and stick it on Boris the Bewildered's butt cheek.

"Students seem to be acting rather odd," he continues with a pondering lilt as we begin doing our rounds. "I just saw a large group of Gryffindor first years in the common room putting frog brains in their hair."

"You know what first years are like. Completely mental," I say while flicking my hand dismissively.

"And earlier I had to deal with a first year Hufflepuff caked in flour. He said Mary McDonald threw a flour bomb at him from the 6th floor."

"Brilliant! So she finally managed to hit one. That girl has terrible aim," I inform Remus.

"Hmm, well it seems a little out of character for Mary."

"You don't know Mary like I do. Everyone thinks she's innocent just because she's good-natured but she's actually got a wicked sense of humour."

"That may be but its still rather funny that Sirius pulled off such a successful atmospheric charm," he says, his eyebrows rising into his hairline. I plaster on a fake smile. It's not really my idea of hilarious but whatever floats his boat.

"Sirius is a very talented wizard," I say graciously.

"Hmm, but I seem to remember only one student from our year being particularly successful with atmospheric charms in class last week."

"You don't say. Who? Was it you, Remus? Or was it Peter? It was Peter wasn't it. That saucy little minx."

Remus struggles to keep up with me as I leap from one moving staircase to another. Sometimes Remus gets in this mood where he subtly tries to reprimand you about something. He does it so slyly that you don't even see it coming until you're right in the thick of it. The only thing you can do in these circumstances is try to outrun the wily wizard.

"It was clearly you, Lily," Remus says tetchily as he sprints to catch up with me. "The jig is up."

"Well done Sherlock. You got me. What are you going to do, dob me in?"

"Of course not. But I would like to know why you're acting like this."

"I don't know," I shrug my shoulders. "I just stopped caring," I say truthfully. I'm tempted to keep messing with Remus in much the same way that I've been messing with James and Sirius but it just doesn't feel right. He's far too observant. Maybe James and Sirius would be more observant too if they stopped squinting and actually opened their eyes once in a while.

"I understand that feeling," he says empathetically. "But how long are you going to keep this up for?" Remus's voice is strained by something that sounds suspiciously like fear.

"Remus Lupin, are you scared?"

"Its just that you can be very persuasive Lily," he says delicately. I know where he's coming from. Hogwarts once had a debating club. One of the questions was, 'should Hogwarts have a debating club?' and I was assigned to debate in the negative. I was so successful at arguing my point that that was the end of the debating club.

"Without even meaning too you can influence people to act more like yourself, by leading by example. It's all well and good when you're influencing people to be better. But I shudder to think what's going to happen when you influence the whole school to be wayward. "

"Chaos," I whisper, licking my lips greedily. I had no conscious intention of influencing the whole school to abandon their moral code. But now Remus has suggested it, the idea is rather tantalizing.

"It's starting to happen already. The tiniest shift in Hogwarts eco system and ripples of consequence are already starting to occur. I'd hazard a guess that the Gryffindors with frog brains in their hair and Mary and Alice flour bombing first years has something to do with your sway." While Remus is making observations on the Hogwarts eco system and gently trying to lecture me, I guide our path towards the fourth floor.

"Not to mention James is beside himself," Remus ploughs on. "He thinks you're under the influence of an Imperius Curse. And you've really triggered Sirius's volatile temper."

"But Remus," I say sweetly, interrupting his boring insights into how those two gooses are feeling. I can't believe he actually thinks I'd be concerned just because the squinty brothers are throwing a tantrum. "Don't you think with everything going on with this you-know-who fellow rising to power and the threat of a wizard war on the horizon that we should spend what precious time we do have having as much fun as possible?"

"Well-"

"Don't you think doing homework and being a prefect etc. is all a bit pointless when we could all be dead tomorrow?"

"That's a bit dramatic but-"

"Why should we be the ones to stop everyone else's fun? We're teenagers, Remus. Who knows how much time we have left to be silly and enjoy ourselves. We have to seize the day, before there are no more days to seize," I say stirringly, and I see a dash of rebellion flashing across his cinnamon coloured eyes.

I hear the faint beat of music and muffled laughter coming from a classroom behind Remus. I stride forward and throw the door open, causing all the Hufflepuffs inside to leap into the air in shock.

"Well, well, well. What's going on here?" All the little badgers are cowering in fear. One Hufflepuff has frozen in an uncomfortable pose while playing limbo under a broomstick. Amos is wearing a lampshade on his head at a jaunty angle, which is particularly odd since Hogwarts doesn't have any lamps. Dorcas is leaning on a desk with her arms crossed and looking quite happy to see me. Poor petal is probably overjoyed to be rescued from the Hufflepuff's weak attempts at a party.

"We'll be going, Lily," Amos says. "Awfully sorry, won't happen again," he says quickly as his arms rap protectively around the crate of Butterbeer and he makes to leave.

"Not so fast," I say. "Drop the Butterbeers Diggory, and no one gets hurt." I meant to say disciplined but this sounds far more threatening. Diggory obediently places the butterbeer on the floor.

"I can't believe you would disrespect your school like this. Shame on you. All of you," I say piously. The Hufflepuffs look mortified.

"Now scram," I order, and the little badgers sprint for the door, peaked terror in their eyes. Remus comes in after them, brushing his light brown hair out of his face.

"I thought you were all for rule breaking now," he says looking perplexed at my sudden urge to assert authority. I crack open a frostye butterbeer and hold it out to him. His eyes light with understanding. His fingers move to his prefect badge and fondle the smooth surface. I can feel his tempered hesitancy.

"So Remus Lupin. Are you in or are you out?"