Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter... I know, its shocking right?

First Night

It wasn't long before the feast ended and the boys found themselves face to face with two fifth years, a boy and a girl, who would be directing them to their dorm rooms.

"Hello, Gryffindor first years!" The boy called out. "I am Frank Longbottom and I will be your house prefect for the year. This is Sally Willinton and she will be you're prefect as well." Frank looked almost bored giving this speech, almost like he didn't want to be there doing it. he gave a sideways glance to the tall girl beside him who also wore a prefect badge with her Gryffindor robes.

Sally smiled and rolled her eyes. "If you'll follow us we'll lead you to the Gryffindor Tower," she began as she proceeded to lead them out of the Great Hall and up the first set of stairs they came across. "Now I order to get in the tower you'll need the password, of course I can't utter it here in case someone else over hears, we don't need other houses sneaking into our common room."

Frank snorted and Sally smirked at him.

"Can you believe this place?" James muttered as he stared at the dozens of paintings on the walls. "There's so many of them. I wonder who they all are."

"Past professors and people who contributed to Hogwarts somehow, no doubt," Remus replied grinning as a clumsy knight stumbled through a painting of older women who looked absolutely mortified. "Merlin's beard!" He exclaimed as the staircase they were on began to shift, several first years gave small shrieks, particularly the muggle borns among them.

"I knew this happened," Sirius said with a wild grin. "But it's way cooler than 'Dromeda made it sound."

"This happens a lot," they heard Sally explain. "Eventually you'll learn how to work around this, but unfortunately it can be rather cumbersome the first couple weeks when you don't know your way around."

"And don't trip off the end of the stair case while its moving." Frank added. "It's happened before," he continued when he received horrified looks from students.

Sirius scoffed as they began ascending another staircase, and then another. "Geez," he sighed. "How far up is this thing?" He asked looking over the side of the staircase, they could look down and see several levels of staircases moving around beneath them.

"Sally said we were going to Gryffindor Tower," Remus replied. "If it's a tower I imagine it would be pretty high up."

They walked down a corridor before walking up yet another staircase which too moved as they moved along. But this time they did not stop, it was like the two prefects had perfect knowledge of were it would end up.

"Only one more to go!" Alice announced as they traveled up the last staircase, by this point in their journey the first years were lost as to where they were in the castle. "Gryffindor Tower is on the seventh floor, a bit of a walk to get to from most places, but it has the best view of the grounds! It even beats out Ravenclaw Tower I think."

"How do you know the Ravenclaw Tower view?" Frank asked.

"Oh," Sally looked thoughtful. "No reason."

"No reason? You shagging someone in Ravenclaw?" Frank asked his voice low, after this comment it became hard to hear the two in their hushed tones.

Sirius turned to James and Remus. "'Dromeda says the Slytherin common room is located under water. Not that I wanted to be in that house, but it seems pretty cool. Their windows are windows into the lake, its green tinted because of the water, at least that's what she says."

"Sounds dark." James commented.

"Knowing the primarily pure blood slime that occupies that house you bet its dark. You should see my house; it's pretty much a museum of dark objects."

Finally they reached the seventh floor and stopped in front of a painting of a heavy woman dressed in a pink dress. The trio looked to one another in confusion. "What's supposed to happen now?" James murmured.

The woman in the painting shifted. "Password?" She asked.

"Nogtail." Frank said as everyone gasped as the woman gave them a polite nod and the painting swung open to reveal a stone passageway.

"Way cool," Sirius grinned as they stepped through the threshold and into a large stone room.

"Welcome to the Gryffindor Common Room!" Frank said spreading his arms out.

"Oh… wow," Remus gasped taking in the high arch stone ceiling and large plush furniture around a mahogany coffee table, hand carved with lion heads in the corners. But what was really impressive was the fire place, they could stand in it, it was so large. On the wall there was a notice board where they saw older students posting papers up already for various clubs and teams.

"This is incredible." Sirius laughed, there were torches on the walls to light the room, and one large hanging chandelier. The stone walls were covered in scarlet tapestries which glowed in response to the firelight around them.

"Ladies," Sally said separating from Frank. "Follow me, this way to the girls dormitories. Gentlemen, if you would follow Frank to the boy's dorms we'll show you to your rooms."

The boys and girls obediently separated, this only left James, Sirius, Remus and that small boy Peter following Frank.

"So," Frank said turning around to face them as they walked up the stone staircase. "You enjoying Hogwarts so far? I mean, I know you've only been here for like five minutes, but how you liking it?"

"It's incredible," James said. "I can't wait to start classes."

Frank snorted. "Yeah, that's what you say now. Wait till you're in your fifth year."

They walked out onto a small balcony of the common room before turning a corner into another hallway. This one had three doors before there was another staircase leading further up the tower.

"This one is your room." Frank said opening the first door they came across. "Second years are across the hall." He pointed to the second door. "Third and fourth years up the stairs, fifth and sixth up another flight, seventh are at the top of the tower."

"There's your bathroom, over there, across the room. Am I alright to leave you boys alone?" Frank asked. "I think you can all handle it from here, breakfast is at eight, you'll get your class schedules then. No lights out in the dorms, but you're not to be wandering the halls of the castle after nine unless you have business to attend you. Like a late detention or a class." He added. "Good night."

The four boys chorused a 'good night' before Frank shut the door behind him and when he did Sirius let out a high pitched squeal of excitement. "Oh this is great! We have our own room, we got our own bathroom, I'm sharing a dorm with three awesome mates. Actually I don't know you Pete but I'm sure you're great!" He said with much enthusiasm.

Peter gave a shy smile and put his trunk down at the foot of one of the beds. "I call this one." He said simply.

"Of course!" James exclaimed. "I claim this one," he said running over and jumping on one of the four poster beds. This bed is better than my bed at home!"

Sirius picked the one beside James and Remus was left with the last bed, the one next to the window. Not that it bothered him, he did have a curtain around his bed after all so if he wanted he could easily pull the curtains shut. He just wished he could have gotten one further away from the direct moonlight. But oh well, it really didn't bother him too much. He did however walk over and pull the curtains shut on the window so he could no longer see the moon shining in the night sky.

"Don't like the view, mate?" James asked still bouncing on the bed.

"It just sort of creeps me out," Remus said slightly flustered. "Too many muggle horror flicks I guess. Anyway, I'm Remus Lupin, it's good to meet you." He said walking over to Peter and shaking his timid hand. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced. That's James Potter and Sirius Black over there."

Peter gave them a small wave. "Hi," he said.

"We saw you on the train," Sirius said. "Lucius was beating you up, yeah? Sorry, he can be a prick. Well, actually, he's always a prick."

"You know that guy?" Peter asked sitting down on his bed.

Sirius nodded. "Dating my cousin he is, not a nice fella, but we shouldn't be running into him too often, he's a sixth year. In a couple years he'll be gone anyway and we can make fun of the underclassmen." He smiled.

Peter smirked at that. "I'd like to be the one pulling the jokes for once."

James grinned. "Than you're lucky you found us, Sirius and I are rather famous around my household for our practical jokes."

"My mother has screamed her head off at me for pranking her and father. So funny…" Sirius mused.

"Funny?" Peter asked.

"Mother and Father are bigoted pure bloods, can't stand some of the things they say, if I pull a harsh joke on them I assure you they disserve it."

"But now," James said. "We can turn it up a notch, start pranking on a large scale. We're at Hogwarts now, mate, just think of all the people who have yet to have dungbombs in their underpants."

"Their underpants?" Remus asked. "How did you manage that?"

"My little brother Regulus," Sirius began. "He's a snot nosed brat. He deserved every bit of that torture. It's really not hard, shrinking charm is all we needed."

Remus couldn't stop a small smile. "You got in trouble?"

"Oh yeah," Sirius nodded. "Grounded for a month and got in trouble for underage magic since mum and dad weren't home when I did it, the Ministry knew it was me. I had to do all the chores for a month. It's okay though, I got the house elf to do them."

"You are one of the wealthiest pure blood families in existence and you had chores?" Remus asked.

"Yes, I had chores." Sirius sighed. "My brother doesn't have chores and my mother lays about all day barking orders and taking about filthy mudbloods and half breeds-"

Remus flinched.

"Father does whatever it is he does all day and I'm left doing the chores the house elf should do anyway. That's why we have a house elf, isn't it?" Sirius ended his rant. "But anyway, you're right James, this is the perfect opportunity to work on those inventions we were working on anyway."

"Inventions?" Remus asked.

"Last time the two of us met," James explained. "We were conjuring a slime spell to go off whenever someone opened a door. But we've been having trouble actually doing it, the slime's too thick and it takes several minutes to drop down, so the person notices it before it hits them. Then we get a more watery one and it doesn't stick nearly as well as we would have liked. It's more or less just green water."

"Which is still good, I mean green water does freak people out, but slime should be slimy." Sirius added.

Remus thought for a moment and smiled. "I may be able to help you two out with that. I'm quite good with the technical aspect of spells, or at least my mother thinks so." He blushed a little, perhaps mentioning his mother to his new friends wasn't a good idea, he wanted them to think he was friend material, not a mama's boy.

"Great! If your mothers right you might be able to give us a hand." James said and bent over the edge of his bed to open his trunk. "I have the parchment in here somewhere with the formulas we were working on."

While he shuffled through his trunk Sirius took the opportunity to go into his and change into his pajamas. Upon seeing this Remus changed into his as well, they differed greatly from Sirius's which were green and silk. Sirius commented he really should get more Gryffindor house appropriate ones but his mother bought him these so of course they were green.

Remus's pajamas on the other hand just consisted of an old shirt with holes and tattered edges and a pair of over sized flannel pants with holes in the knees. It wasn't that his mom hadn't offered to buy him a new pair of pajamas, he just always declined. These worked and they needed the money for other things, like his school books and robes which proved to be rather expensive. They weren't even able to get him an animal; though he didn't say anything about it he really wanted an owl.

Remus kneeled on his bed as he watched Peter open up a small box with holes in it he had attached to his trunk.

"What's that you got there?" Sirius asked, James still ruffling through the trunk murmuring to himself.

"This is my toad," Peter said taking out the small animal. "His name is Rotters."

"Rotters?" Sirius grimaced. "That's a weird name."

"He smells sometimes." Peter explained. "Like rotten things so I thought it was fitting."

Sirius smirked. "You're right, it is fitting." He said getting a wiff of the warty animal. " Mother said she would buy me an owl of my own only if my grades were up to her standards, but seeing as I got into Gryffindor I don't think any grades would meet her standards now." He laughed humorlessly.

"Same with my mum, she said I could get an owl for Christmas if I kept my grades up enough." James said as he pulled out a couple crinkles sheets of parchment with splattered ink stains on them and a green substance Remus couldn't place.

"This is the formula you have so far?" Remus asked taking the parchment and examining it.

"That's it," James said.

Remus looked it over seeming fairly impressed by what he saw. "It's okay, but I already see a few miscalculations with your spell right here."

James looked over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, see right here? You mistranslated this word here."

James gave Sirius a small grin. "Siri, I think we found our intellect. After all, a group of pranksters can't be anything without the man behind the pranks. You're the genius we need, Remus."

Remus flushed. "I'm not a genius." He said quietly.

"Smart enough, you've had this thing for three seconds and already you're noticing mistranslated words. I should show you all our failed projects and ask your opinion."

By now Sirius was looking over Remus's shoulder as well. "Huh, look at that." He mused. "Hey, Pete, you a brain?"

"No." Peter said hugging his toad.

"Hm, well, we'd need a decoy anyway." Sirius winked. "Come on over here, mate." He waved him over and Pete jumped happily off his bed and over to Remus' where they were all examining the parchment.

Remus smiled to himself as he explained the proper translation and pronunciation of the words. Friends, he was getting friends. Sure he was helping them perfect a prank that if they got pulling they would probably all get detention but that didn't matter, really. He could handle a couple detentions if it meant he wasn't going to be all alone. Who knows though, maybe they wouldn't even get caught and they would be able to slip through unnoticed. After all, how many jokes could they really pull before they got tired of pushing their luck?