"I can't believe that pass, Prongs!"

"I know, I was just so into it- I guess it was good luck."

"No, James, that was pure skill," Lily commented, making him go beet red. The game against Hufflepuff had just ended, and we'd won by a tiny margin. Just before the Hufflepuff seeker had gotten the snitch, James had managed to swoop in and score the last 10 points we needed to win. We all joked and some of us groaned (hey, it was a tough game) as we walked down to a secluded area on the eleventh floor.

"You sure we're allowed to do this?" Peter asked as Lily opened the door to an empty classroom.

"Hey, what are they going to do to Head Boy and Head Girl? Besides, we have no other places to practice," James shrugged. I heard Lily mumble something under her breath as the door opened and tried to make a mental note to ask her about it later, but to be quite honest, I was exhausted and probably would never remember to.

We walked in and I hopped onto a desk. The six of us, Peter, Remus, James, Sirius, Lily, and I, were all here in an empty classroom at three in the afternoon on a Saturday, planning to practice spells rather than celebrate our win. Somehow, we had been able to sneak out of the common room without anyone noticing our departure from the party. Sure, we all wanted to stay and bask in our house glory, but no, we had all promised to learn the spells, and so we would.

Remus and Lily went first… mostly because they were the only ones who actually learned all the spells beforehand, and they practiced some simple ones against each other. Stupefy, protego, expelliarmus, shielding spell. Over, and over again it went.

I tried my best to stay awake the whole time, knowing that these spells were important building blocks to the real thing, but admittedly, I dozed off a few times. Once I may have even fallen off the desk, but luckily Sirius caught me before I hit the ground.

We split up into pairs, going against each other, Sirius and me, James and Lily, Remus and Peter. Sirius and I were pretty equal in our dueling, both of us being much better at offensive than defensive spells. James was great at all of it, not surprisingly, and Lily was better at shielding spells, but had an amazing knack for the Expelliarmus charm. Remus was really impressive, looking like he'd been dueling his whole life… Peter we're not going to talk about.

"Mutatio Skullus!" I pointed at Sirius, and his beautiful face started doubling, and he ended up with three heads. I bit my lip not to laugh, but he hit me with tail-growing hex, and well, you can guess what happened.

The two of us glared at each other, trying very hard not to laugh, but all six of us heard a noise, and immediately the room hushed.

"Severus, I heard something! Laughing or something."

"Macnair, you heard nothing, now shut up. Tell me about what he said he wants us to do," Snape replied.

"Fine… We're supposed to find this Mudblood…" The voices drifted down the hallway, and all of us were left staring around the room. Lily and I made eye contact from across the room, but no one did anything.

"I think that's enough practice for today, it's supper time, and if we're not there that'll be too obvious," Remus said into the silence, and we all quickly put the room back together and made our way to the dining hall.

"Oh well, well, well, if it isn't my least favorite Lupin," Gwen looked at me in disgust, and I looked back with venom.

"Couldn't you just ignore me, really? You used to do it so well," I stomped over to my bed, putting my Quidditch uniform back in my shelf.

"But it's so much less fun that way! See, Gwenny here was just telling me about her snogging your brother just at the last party" Cathy intercepted, smirking as I slowed my packing.

"Oh really? I'm sure it was right when you were snogging Sirius," I smirked right back and she glared. Obviously she too remembered our encounter with her lying last year.

Quickly, Cathy released her glare and rolled her eyes, "oh please, Sirius is old news now that you've tainted him; he's been so boring as of late."

I smiled as I put away my things, facing away from them.

"You know Isabelle, we've actually been talking, and we think it's about time we make a truce," Gwen said, and my eyebrows shot up as I turned to them.

"Sorry?"

Gwen elbowed Cathy when she looked reluctant, "uh yeah, yeah. What with the war going on, we just think it's about high time this whole 'thing' ends."

"Why would you want to hold a truce?" I asked, looking at her skeptically.

"Look, it's way more Gwen than me. I mean, I'm not saying we should be friends or anything, I mean, Merlin no, you don't even know how to clean mud off yourself before you walk in, but yeah, a truce. Some things are more important than petty fighting, and it's not like I like Sirius anymore, so what's the point?" Cathy looked sincere enough despite the insult.

However, being the idiot that I am, the first thing that popped out of my mouth was "I don't like Sir-"

"Oh stop it, I'm not blind. You're so smitten it's disgusting, but again, who cares? Have we got an agreement?"

I swallowed and nodded, sticking out my hand to her, still looking kind of confused. "No more fighting… We're done." Cathy sort of smiled, not fully, but nevertheless more than I had ever received.

After the exchange, I went to go meet Lily at the library and the thoughts flooded my mind. Of course, there were the suspicions that Cathy could have been lying to get me off my guard, but even to me that sounded like a lot of unnecessary work. I mean, Cathy wasn't evil, sure, she didn't like me, but she wasn't a bad person. It'd never occurred to me that we were all going to be fighting a greater cause, together. Those people I'd never particularly liked, heck, even those people who were downright rude to me, most of us were going to be fighting together. Dying together. The world wasn't split into the good and the bad, of course not. Everyone had a little bit of something in him, and that's okay. This revelation occurred to me as I stepped into the library, quite pleased with myself.

"We can't keep practicing in that room, people are starting to get suspicious," I complained as our group whispered in the common room. "Every time, there are people who walk by, and it's a matter of time before someone figures out we're in there."

"Well then, where should we do it?" Lily asked, and the Remus and I locked eyes.

Well? Do you think it's time?

Izzy, she's one of our best friends… I'd trust Lily with my life.

But, what if…

"Isabelle! Remus! Hello?" Lily snapped at us, and I looked at her in surprise.

"Sorry."

Remus took a deep breath and he whispered so much his voice was barely audible, "look, Lily, there's something we really need to tell you…"

All five of us marauders looked nervously at each other, but I continued. "Lily, Remus and I are-"

"I know."

"Look, no, you don't understand, we're-"

"I know, guys."

"No, I don't think you do-"

"Merlin guys! You're werewolves, I know!"

All of us shut our mouths and frowned, staring at her. Lily looked like she was about to laugh, like it had been the most obvious thing in the world.

"Wait, what?"

Lily sighed in exasperation, "your mother only ever gets 'sick' on the full moon, has for six years. You always look sickly pale, and injured whenever the next morning comes. You guys always act mysterious and strange only on one night out of the whole month, and you've got scars all over yourselves. We've been good friends for a while now, these things don't go unnoticed"

We all looked flabbergasted, coming to realization how obvious it really had been, and how badly we were at keeping secrets.

"Oh, and not to mention, Remus' nickname is Moony. That's kind of a dead give-away."

"Right… So… The Shrieking Shack it is then," James concluded, still looking as confused as the rest of us.