glazedwater: Thank you for the review! I agree, James and Lily are adorable:)

iceandfire 105: Thanks! Yeah I realized that the Marauders Map was probably the logical solution to finding Emmeline in the previous chapter, so I decided I would close up that little plot hole:) Lol anyway, enjoy this next chapter!

Thursday

November 22nd

8:35 am

Great Hall

"…You mean he forgot to add belladonna?" Amal asked, laughing over his bowl of porridge.

Marlene giggled, a piece of toast in hand. "Yeah, he just added the crocodile heart to his Galloping Potion without anything else! The stench was foul – and Slughorn was standing right there."

Marlene and Amal both cracked up. Lily frowned at them both.

"That's not very nice, Marlene," she said while reaching over for the milk jug. "Peter was obviously humiliated by that whole ordeal. You shouldn't be so mean to him."

"But Galloping Potions are like second-year stuff," Marlene insisted. "And he chose it to present for his Potions Demonstration."

"Well, it wasn't like your Polyjuice Potion was perfect," Lily countered. "Slughorn said that your lacewing flies were overcooked."

"Your lacewing flies were overcooked?!" Amal looked appalled. "Marlene, how could you?"

Marlene laughed, and even Lily managed a grin.

"No! I always knew my substandard potions would tear us apart!" Marlene wailed dramatically. Amal cracked up again, and the couple continued to goof around with each other for a few minutes afterward.

Lily, getting bored by their cutesy banter, finally decided to interject: "So Marlene, where's Emmeline? Wasn't she supposed to meet us down here?"

Marlene continued to giggle, wiping her eyes. "No – Emmeline doesn't like coming down to breakfast anymore. She's afraid of running into Reggie."

Amal looked surprised. "You mean she's still upset about their break-up?"

Lily turned to him, shocked. "It's only been two weeks! Of course she's still upset!"

"I'm not trying to be tactless or anything," Amal said quickly. "I just had the impression that she wasn't very upset about their break-up to begin with, that's all."

"For the first few days she wasn't," Lily nodded in agreement. "In fact, I'd almost say she looked happy…"

"She just didn't want us all to worry about her," Marlene said quickly. "She has a tendency to do that."

"So why is she so eager to avoid Reggie now?" Lily asked, and Marlene shrugged.

"Since about a week ago she's been talking to me more and more about how upset she is from being dumped. It's sort of weird… I don't know where it's all coming from."

"Remus told me he saw Sirius talking to her in the common room last week," Amal said, choosing a cereal. "He said it looked as if she had been crying about something, and Sirius was comforting her. Maybe it had something to do with Reggie?"

Lily and Marlene stared at Amal.

"Sirius was comforting her?" Marlene asked dubiously, and Amal nodded.

"Sirius Black?" Lily said, making sure she understood correctly. "The guy who chucks flobberworms at teachers in class?"

Amal nodded again, looking amused. "Yeah."

The two girls looked at each other. "I do not understand what Emmeline has over him," Marlene shook her head bemusedly.

"It's like he's a completely different person around her!" Lily agreed. "When he said he was going out to look for her that night she went missing, I almost couldn't believe it."

"It was a bit strange," Marlene nodded in agreement.

"Maybe Sirius likes Emmeline," Amal suggested. There was a short silence, where the girls just stared at him.

"Sirius doesn't like girls," Lily said after a moment.

"Or rather, he only likes certain parts of girls," Marlene clarified, and Lily giggled.

Amal shrugged. "That may be, but I've seen the look on his face when he's around Emmeline. It reminds me back when I first started noticing you," he grinned at Marlene, who smiled, rolling her eyes and blushing.

Lily frowned at Amal. "Wait – so you really think Sirius likes Emmeline?"

Amal shrugged again. "It would make sense. He's always hanging out with her, and it doesn't seem like he has an ulterior motive about it."

Lily and Marlene looked at each other. Their eyes seemed to communicate what they wanted to ask out loud: What do you think?

"Em knows better than to get involved with a guy like Sirius," Lily said quickly. "She's nice, but she's not stupid."

"But if he does like her," Marlene still looked a bit worried. "There isn't much we can do about that, can we?"

"No," Lily sighed, looking troubled. "But like I said – Emmeline knows better than that. She just broke up with Reggie, and I doubt she's willing to just jump into another relationship. And I'm sure Sirius'll hook up with another pretty girl and forget all about Emmeline," she added with certainty.

"Let's hope so," Marlene said, turning back to her meal.

Amal didn't say anything out of respect for Marlene's fierce overprotectiveness of Emmeline, but he honestly felt differently about the whole issue. If Sirius did like Emmeline (and Amal was quite sure that he did), why would that be such a terrible thing? While Amal wasn't exactly Sirius's biggest fan, the fact that Sirius was even remotely interested in a girl like Emmeline showed that he was at least beginning to grow up on an emotional level. And even Emmeline, who Amal actually did like, could benefit from being with a guy as fun and easygoing as Sirius.

Amal knew better than to say any of this out loud, however. Besides – what did he know? He was just the guy who had been in a healthy, happy relationship for over eight months…

Thursday

November 22nd

7:13 pm

Gryffindor common room

"Hey."

Remus approached the table where James was working alone. Charts and calculations and cartography sketches littered the small work space – James was writing feverishly on a long piece of parchment, the heading of which spelled out in a coded message "The Marauder's Map."

"Hey, Moony," James barely glanced up from his work. "Did you find it?"

"Sort of," Remus plopped himself down in the chair opposite James, dropping his bag stuffed with library books at his feet. "There aren't any records of the original schematics of Hogwarts castle, as I had already told you, but there are actually a lot of history books regarding the building of the school. I figured one of them might be helpful."

"Yeah, definitely," James looked up at Remus with a grin. "Sorting through all of them might be a good job for you, eh?"

Remus rolled his eyes, smiling. "How generous of you."

"What can I say? I'm a giver," James turned back to his writing. The two boys fell silent for a bit as James continued to work on the map and Remus began sorting through all the books in his bag. He picked up one that looked promising, The Four Houses: A Detailed History of Hogwarts' Origins.

"So where are Padfoot and Wormtail?" Remus opened the large tome and began to read. "I thought they were going to help you tonight."

"Right now they're in the library researching spells or potions we can use on the project," James said. They had agreed to refer to the Marauder's Map as "the project" when discussing it in public. "They should be back pretty soon."

"Think they're gonna find anything?" Remus flipped the page.

"I guess we'll see," James said, suddenly glancing up and setting his quill down. Remus turned around to see Peter scurrying towards them from the portrait hole, carrying a large stack of parchment in his arms.

"We found some great stuff," Peter said excitedly, setting the stack down on the table on top of James' work. "Padfoot found the recipe for that potion used to make photographs move in a person's likeness, and he reckons we can tweak it a bit so we can use it for the people on our map."

"Great, but who said anything about a map?" James asked Peter coolly, flipping through the stack of parchment.

"Oh, er… project. Sorry," Peter stammered, going red.

"Where's Padfoot?" Remus asked, glancing around.

Peter looked over his shoulder, frowning. "He was right behind me…"

The three boys looked around the crowded common room, and after a few seconds Remus spotted him, standing on the other side of the room and talking to Emmeline.

"There he is," Remus pointed him out and the other two looked that way.

"He ditched us for Emmeline?" Peter frowned in confusion.

"He's just talking to her," Remus turned back to his book, but noticed the look on James' face. "What?"

James shook his head and turned back to his work. "Nothing… I just wonder about him, that's all."

"Why's that?" Peter asked, sitting down beside Remus.

"I dunno," James shook his head again. "It's just…" he hesitated, looking awkward. "He's a bit weird about Emmeline, isn't he?"

Remus nodded. "Yeah, I've noticed that too. I mean, he didn't even know who she was at the beginning of the year, and now he goes chasing after her when she goes missing in the middle of the night…"

"Right?" James looked relieved he wasn't the only one who noticed his odd behavior. "And just last week during dinner I caught him staring at her!"

Remus and Peter looked at each other. "Do you think, maybe…?" Remus began to ask, but James cut him off.

"No," he said firmly. "Padfoot doesn't like girls. Or at least in the conventional sense, he doesn't."

The three boys turned to look at Sirius again – he was cracking up over something Emmeline had said to him, and she was smiling widely.

"People change," Remus said fairly, turning back to James. "Em's a really nice girl – I can see why Padfoot would like her."

"But Emmeline had been with that guy Reggie for years," Peter noted. "Why would Padfoot try to go after a girl like her?"

"I dunno," Remus turned to look at James, a small smirk on his face. "But the heart wants what it wants – right, Prongs?"

James rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored that remark. "Look, if Padfoot likes Emmeline, then there isn't really much we can do about it. But I'm telling you – Sirius isn't the type of guy who gets involved with girls like Emmeline."

"So you don't think Emmeline could change his mind?" Peter asked, and James stood up.

"People don't change," he said firmly, and with that he began to walk over to where Sirius and Emmeline were talking, clearly going to extract his best friend from his conversation to discuss their project.

"Well, he's never going to win Lily over with that attitude," Remus muttered under his breath, and Peter laughed.

Sorry, but this was just a little interlude I felt like writing. I tried to upload it earlier, but FF was down for several hours and nobody could upload anything.

I'll try to update as soon as I can - but in the meantime, review!