Chapter 14

Making plans

"We still haven't figured out what we are doing tomorrow," Remus reminded breaking James and Sirius from another argument. This time it was about which professional Quidditch team was the best. They had gone off on a rabbit trail not long after Remus figured out how to do the charm. Somehow, they started on Quidditch.

"Oh right." James remembered finally letting it drop.

"So what are we going to do?" Sirius asked, for once he didn't have a clue. Remus sighed.

"We need to think of ideas. Let's see…It is Halloween so it needs to be something that is scary." He said writing this down on the paper.

"Umm… We could dress up like zombies or something." Peter suggested, Sirius looked at him like he was stupid.

"Please tell me you're kidding." Remus began to write it down. "You're not actually considering this, are you Rem?" Remus sighed.

"No, but it may give us ideas in the future. I'm writing everything down." Remus said as he finished writing.

"What if we pretend one of us is dead?" James asked quickly giving up on that idea.

"No, we have classes tomorrow still; it would interfere with our studies." Remus said managing to remind them that their weekend was almost over.

"Also, where would the person go? I have a feeling they would find us way too easily." Sirius was rather upset that he couldn't think of anything good enough to use, it had never happened before. However, he had never tried to trick more than a few people at a time before.

"And way too unpredictable. What if they brought in the Ministry or something, we could get in major trouble." Remus wrote this down as well.

"We could go with the usual. Fake a murder scene." Sirius gave a try, though he didn't like how unoriginal it was.

"It seems to plain, they would see though it too easily." James suggested and began to pace.

"What if it isn't a murder, just an attack?"

"Ohh, good idea Remus, we could petrify people and write fake warnings on the walls." Sirius said finally liking an idea.

"But petrifaction is too obvious, all they have to do is use the reverse spell. No big deal. We need something better." They all looked at each other for a while.

"This means we have to go to the library, doesn't it." Sirius complained. Remus laughed and nodded. Sirius sighed as they headed out.

After they had so much trouble finding books about mapmaking Remus took it upon himself to memorize where to find just about anything in the library. Thankfully, it wasn't hard to find what they were looking for. It still took them a while to find a book that had what they were looking for, but when they did it was perfect. The spell was not difficult, but not well known. It had a counter spell that also was uncommon and not difficult. Even better was that it acted exactly like the petrifaction spell, but none of its counter curses would work. They were sure that Madam Pomfrey would not be able to figure out how to fix it.

It was also a very safe spell, Remus made sure of it. They even found out that if the counter spell wasn't performed on the victim by dawn the next morning then they would automatically turn back to normal and the victim wouldn't remember anything, which was good for the safety of the Marauders.

They took the book back and practiced on each other. It didn't take long and even Peter was able to get it. Though it took him a while because everyone but James was afraid to have him do it on them until they were sure he could do it right.

"Sirius, that was unnecessary." James said after Sirius used the spell on Peter again. Sirius had already gotten the spell down completely and didn't need to practice anymore it seemed that Sirius preferred practicing on Peter.

"Sorry, just wanted to make sure, we don't want anyone getting hurt or anything." Sirius said using the counter spell on Peter successfully waking him up.

"We also don't want Peter getting hurt, I'm surprised you haven't given him a concussion yet."

"So we have that part down, now what?" Remus asked before they could start fighting again.

"Well we can't just randomly petrify people; we want to make a plan right?" Sirius answered his question with another question.

"The question is, how do we want to display the 'victim'? Do we want to put other stuff with it, because if not I can't imagine it will be all that scary.

"Didn't we say we wanted to write warnings on the walls by them or something?" Peter asked.

"That's right, but what should we write and what with." James began pacing again.

"Well we obviously want to make it look like blood. We shouldn't worry too much about what we write. Trust me, anyone that is going to attack students somewhere as high security as Hogwarts isn't going to put really long threats on the wall. Not anyone that you need to worry about anyway." Sirius explained. Coming from a long line of dark wizards had taught him a few things about how to scare people.

"But we have to put something." James said still worried. Sirius sighed; he knew James was worried about being caught. If they were caught before everyone knows it is just a joke they could get in huge trouble. It was one of the few times James' family background was obvious. Potters were usually well behaving people, he was afraid of hurting his family reputation.

"Just let me worry about it, mate." Sirius said sparing his friend of the worry. No one would be surprised to see a Black doing something like this, and if they were it would only be surprised that the Black didn't actually kill anyone.

"Do I need to remind you all that it doesn't matter who is worrying about what to write if we don't have anything that could possibly make it look like blood." Remus complained, they were getting excessively ahead of their selves, which wasn't good when talking about something this serious.

"Do you think Professor Slughorn has any blood or anything for his potions we can steal?" Sirius looked to James as though he would know.

"No he mentioned that he needed to go get some when I was in detention Saturday." He shook his head still pacing.

"Darn." Sirius said. Remus wasn't listening anymore. When James mentioned detention it had reminded Remus of something Hagrid had said during his.

"I think Hagrid has some." He told them, not missing the morbidity of this conversation.

"What? Why would he have some?" Peter asked nearly freaking out. He was still very afraid of the half-giant.

"Dragon blood, I think. He had a new pet and he wasn't sure what it ate, so he grabbed some random stuff it just happened to be one of the few things it didn't like." Remus said hoping dragon blood would be a good substitute, he really didn't want to use human. Seeing human blood, other than his own as he has seen it so much, scared him. It reminded him to much of the werewolf in him.

"That would work perfectly, dragon blood and human blood is very close. No one could tell the difference unless they did a full examination of it." Sirius said. It somewhat scared Remus how much Sirius knew about this, but he chose to ignore it to protect his sanity. "The question is, how are we going to get it?"

"We are not going to steal it." James said in a tone that let in no argument.

"Why?" Sirius asked confused.

"Hagrid is really nice, but he is going to be upset if we steal something from him. I absolutely refuse to steal something from a half-giant. No way, not going to happen, you can't make me."

"What is wrong James, are you scared or something?" Sirius teased

"Yes, yes I am." Sirius was surprised that was so willing to admit it.

"I don't think we need to steal anything. I think if we tell him we need it for a potion he would let us borrow it." Remus told them.

"Really?" Sirius seemed surprised.

"Ya, he is pretty naive and he trusts me, so I think it would be fine. Actually, I think he would let us use it even if he knew what we were going to do with it. He has a pretty good sense of humor."

"Cool, let's go ask him" Sirius and James said at the same time and headed for the door. Peter moaned, he had hoped that he wouldn't have to go see the giant but now he didn't really have a choice.

They hurried down the halls. Of course they forgot that it was past curfew. Thankfully they weren't caught. Remus seemed to be the only one that noticed that it was dark when they ran across the grounds. He chose to ignore it as well, he knew they wouldn't care. He was a little worried that Hagrid would be upset for being out after curfew. He then remembered that this was Hagrid he was thinking about. Hagrid probably didn't even know what time curfew was.

When they got to Hagrid's hut they knocked and he opened the door. A smile quickly appeared on his face and he let them inside, also ignoring how late at night it was.

"Well ain't this a surprise, didn't expect to see you lot 'ere." He looked at them all, smiling at Remus.

"Hello Hagrid, My name is James Potter." James introduced, shaking Hagrid's hand. Hagrid nodded as though he had recognized him even though Remus was the only one that he had met. Remus wondered if the Potters were as recognizable as the Blacks were. James continued introducing Peter as well knowing that Peter wouldn't say a word in the giant's presence unless he absolutely had too.

"Nice ter meet ya" He said and then looked to Sirius. "Yer must be a Black" Sirius got a hard look on his face. He didn't like being called a Black at all.

"Sirius" he said though clenched teeth.

"Just ignore him, Hagrid. He has family issues." James said teasing Sirius, who in turn punched James lightly on the shoulder.

"Ah, right, I knew that. Sorry Sirius, didn't mean ter insult ya there." He smiled at Sirius, it wasn't new knowledge of course, he had already known that Sirius and the other Blacks weren't that close. Sirius smiled back, already over his anger.

"No problem" he said and sat on a chair by the kitchen table. Or well the table, there really wasn't much of a kitchen in the one room hut. It was tiny, especially when you think of who is living in it. James found himself wondering where Hagrid slept when Remus suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

"Um Hagrid, is something burning." He had a look on his face that made it obvious that he smelled something bad. Hagrid suddenly stood and hurried over to the oven.

"Oh no." He said as he held a plate of what looked like had once been cookies of some sort. He sighed and threw them out. "Oh well, no use crying over burnt cookies."

"Sorry Hagrid." Remus said as though it was his fault they burnt.

"Ah, don't yer worry 'bout it, It ain't yer fault." He said.

"Right, Remus." Sirius smiled at him. "He probably would have burnt them anyway." Remus gave him a hard look.

"Sirius…" he began but Hagrid just laughed.

"Yer probably right. They were burnt 'fore yer got 'ere." Remus rolled his eyes, just because it was right doesn't mean that it wasn't rude.

"Don't worry, I can't cook either. My attention span isn't long enough to make food. I get distracted half way though." Sirius laughed knowing that that is what happened to Hagrid. Hagrid laughed as well. Sirius proved how short his attention span was when something distracted him from his conversation with Hagrid.

"What?" James asked when Sirius slowly walked to the couch that took up most of the room in the hut.

"I hear something." They were all quiet, Remus heard it as well it sound like a dog panting.

"Oh thad be my dog. His name is…" Hagrid began but was interrupted when the said dog jumped on Sirius and he screamed. They all stared at said dog in silence for a minute worried about what Sirius was going to do. When the puppy 'attacked' him he fell over in shock, now he was staring up at the puppy while it tried to lick him in the face.

"H-Hagrid, I-I don't think this is a normal dog." Sirius said avoiding the not one, but three tongues that were trying to drown him in slobber.

"Ain't he cute." Hagrid said with a smile. "His name it Fluffy, strange though, he usually don't like strangers all that much. Wonder why he likes you so much."

"Hagrid that dog has three heads." James said still in complete shock that a three headed dog 'attacked' his friend.

"I know, bought him off a merchant at the Hogs Head in Hogsmeade. Ain't never seen another one." He said with obvious pride in his voice.

When Sirius finally got over his shock he lifted the puppy off him for a while trying to get away from the never-ending amount of slobber. "Wow, I've never seen one before." He set the puppy on the ground in front of him and as soon as he let go of it, it jumped on him again. This time he laughed. He pet the puppy and it seemed content to just let him pet it instead of licking him. "I always wanted a dog. Begged my mother to get me one. She absolutely refused, said that they were dirty disgusting animals that had no use being in anyone's home." He said the last part in the most sarcastic tone he could mutter.

"Well, now that's darn right wrong." Hagrid said, it looked like Sirius had hit a nerve. "Dogs are very good animals, Yer just got to train them right. Make some of the most loyal pets yer could have, dogs do. Yer treat them right an' they're do anything for ya." He ranted.

"I know that's what I thought. But Noooooooo," Sirius sighed. "She hates all animals." This obviously wasn't a person that Hagrid could ever get along with.

They were silent for a while when James finally remembered why they had come all the way out here in the middle of the night.

" Oh Hagrid, I forgot, we were wondering if we could barrow something." Hagrid looked to James and James looked at Remus telling him that since it was his idea he had to ask.

"Do you remember when I had detention here, you mentioned that you had a few things that you needed to get rid of? You said that you were going to try to feed it to a new pet in order to figure out what it ate." Remus asked and Hagrid nodded, so he continued "You said that you had some dragon blood."

"Ya, sure. Why you need it?" He said no traces of mistrust in his eyes.

"Ya, there is a potion we need to do, and that is the only ingredient we don't have." Remus lied. Sirius looked at him in shock. He had never expected Remus of all people to be a good liar. He seemed way to honest for it, but he could so well in fact that he was sure that even he would believe Remus, had he not already known what it was for. He was usually pretty good at telling when he was being lied too.

"Sure, no problem." Hagrid walked out to get it. Remus looked around him. It seemed Sirius wasn't the only one who noticed his lying skill.

"What?" He asked.

"Where did you learn to lie like that?" James said beating Sirius to the question. Remus' face turned red. "'Cause I want to learn too."

"Guess I'm just a natural." Remus said. Actually that was also a lie. When he was young he was horrible at lying. The only reason he could do it now is because he'd had so much practice doing it. It was sort of something you had to do when you're a werewolf.

"Dang, and I thought I was good." Sirius said and Remus blushed again. Fortunately for Remus, Hagrid's arrival distracted them.

"'Ere ya go." He said giving them a large jug of it. He didn't ask any more questions to their relief.

"Oh and Hagrid, can you do us a huge favor?" James asked more than a little shocked that it was so easy to get the stuff from him.

"Sure, what?" He said once again surprising them that he was so trusting.

"Can you not tell anyone that you gave this stuff to us? The potion we are making is going to be a surprise for the teachers; we don't want them to know about it before hand." James said smiling when Hagrid nodded.

"No problem." They said their goodbyes after that and started heading back to the school. They got halfway there when they realize that Fluffy had followed Sirius and he had to carry him back to Hagrid, causing them all to laugh. They quieted as soon as they got to the castle though. They had to be extra careful now that they had the blood. If they were caught with the stuff it would ruin all of their plans. Luck was on their side, they didn't see any teacher on their way to the dorm, and the Fat Lady was so sleepy that she barely noticed when they said the password to her.

Now all they had to do was wait until Halloween began.

A/N Phew, that was a long chapter, rather hard to write also. I hope I got Hagrid's speech right. I wasn't sure which words he shortened and stuff.

Hehe I can't wait till the next chapter. I really hope it's good. It is rather strange writing about Halloween in the middle of January.

Well see ya'll soon.