~*~Author's Note~*~ Hey everyone!  This chapter's up a little sooner (yea!)!  I'm not quite sure when the next one will be out, but it's in the making.  My apologies go out to Hyper Princess, as she will not be in this chapter, but the next.  Sorry, I started to go on this tangent and it ended up taking over the chapter, it was crazy!  Anyway, I already know exactly how the next chapter is going to be so hopefully it won't take too long to write and get up.  This chapter's Reviewer's Challenge will be at the end of the chapter.  Whoever gets it will get a cookie (and perhaps a guest appearance?).  I revised this chapter from the original posting earlier today.  Hopefully it's a little better.  On with the show…

P.S. Thoughts are still in single quotation marks!

CHAPTER 7: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

            Lily walked into the Great Hall and sat down next to Venus.  The other girl gave her patronizing look and turned away and pretended to be deep in conversation with Zahra.  Lily sighed.  'Well, that's to be expected.  I mean, I was pretty harsh.'  Figuring that Venus was just going to ignore her during the entire meal, she made to stand up.

            "And where do you think you're going?"  It was Sirius.  Lily gave a somewhat pained smile as he sat down across from her.  She heard Venus give a sonorous "harrumph."  Next to Sirius sat James.  After the incident in the library he had decided to put an end to their infantile feud.  Besides, he needed some one to help him get back at Luna (even though she really didn't do anything), and it just wouldn't be the same without the Marauders.

            "Hi, Lily," he greeted.  "You, um, forgot your bag in the library.  I have it up in my room."

            "Thanks, James," she said, "I guess I forgot about it."  There was a kind of awkward silence between them.  Lily sighed heavily.  She hated apologising, but she knew she had to.

            "Look, James, I'm really sorry about what happened in the library.  I didn't mean to go mad like I did, and I'm really sorry about… about you and Luna.  I can go and speak with her if you'd like."

            "Don't worry about it, Lily.  Besides, I said some pretty nasty things as well.  Forgive and forget?"

            "Cheers!" she said happily, raising her goblet of pumpkin juice.

            She surprised herself by enjoying dinner.  Not only was her favourite meal served, roast chicken and mashed potatoes with treacle tart for dessert, but Sirius and James entertained her by telling about the time they made a galleon float around Diagon Alley, making people chase after it.  One bloke went so far as attempting to climb a street sign to snatch at the gold.  In the end, a middle-aged man named Florean Fortiscue caught them and put them to work painting the walls of a shop he was about to open.  The boys wouldn't have minded so much, but he wouldn't let them use magic.

            Lily laughed at their excursions and followed them upstairs to the common room where James, Sirius and Remus set off a wonderful display of Filibuster Fireworks while Peter led everyone in a chorus of oo's and ah's.  She watched the multicoloured explosions from an oversized cushion in the very front row.  Sirius kept trying to shoot fireworks at Lindsey, but Remus avoided several potential detentions by re directing them towards the ceiling.

            After the Grande Finale, she gave Sirius a goodnight-kiss, headed up to her dormitory and changed into her nightgown.  She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, but couldn't fall asleep.  Perhaps it was because Katerina's snoring was painfully similar to the echo of a foghorn.  When what seemed like an hour had passed, she flipped onto her stomach and whispered through the dark.

            "Venus!"

            A muffled grumble from the next bed over told Lily that she had heard her.

            "Are you awake?"

            "Yeah, but I'm just pretending to be asleep because I was hoping to be attacked by a Lethifold," she said sarcastically.

            "I wanted to talk to you about earlier.  You know, about our little, er, row."

            Venus rubbed her eyes furiously with her fists.  "Lily, I'm really tired; I don't feel like going through this right now."

            Lily ignored her and continued with what she had to say; she had to get this off her chest.  "I'm really sorry.  You were completely right about everything.  I am obsessing over Sirius and I'm quite sure why."  She thought of his kiss and reminisced for a moment about their various private moments.  "He's just… different than Derek."

            There was silence from the other bed.  Lily wasn't sure if Venus was accepting her apology or if she had fallen asleep.  Nonetheless, she forged onward, hoping it wasn't the latter.

            "I shouldn't have ignored you, or – or anyone else.  I haven't been paying attention to anything that's important.  All I care about is me – what I want, what I like, what I'm doing, me, me, me.  I've been a real banshee and I'm sorry."  Still the silence prolonged.  Lily hesitated and then asked the question that would kill her if the answer were no: "Are we still friends?"

            "Of course we are, Lil!" Venus reassured her immediately.  "I wouldn't let some chap come between my best friend and me!"  Lily smiled.  "Besides," Venus added, "If you kept up the way you were, I was going to push Sirius off of North Tower during Astronomy."

            Lily laughed and looked up as her bed curtains were opened.  Her best friend stood over her holding her stuffed dog that they had dubbed "Snuffles" in their first year.  Lily sat up as Venus sat down Indian-Style at the foot of her bed and started gossiping as if nothing had ever happened.

            As the two girls talked about Venus' new crush, Davey Gudgeon, and what it was that had taken permanent residence up Professor Pestal's arse, the Marauders were on Mission Animagi.

            Every full moon since the end of their first year, Sirius, James, and Peter would sneak into the library at night, under the protection of James' invisibility cloak, to find information on becoming Animagi.  Last year they had found a book in the restricted section containing a potion.  This year had been spent getting together the ingredients and brewing it. 

It was actually more than just a potion.  It was very complex and included a potion that took at least two months to make, a chant (which you had to say in just the right way), and a lot of concentration.

            It was in their first year that they had first heard about animagi.  Professor McGonagall was explaining about a difficult trial she had to go through in order to obtain her license.  The Hufflepuff she was talking to, Aretha Skeeter, seemed incredibly interested.

They didn't think much of it until a couple weeks later in Defense Against the Dark Arts.  They were learning about werewolves and Professor McKinnon had assigned them to read a werewolf encounter and summerise it.  Sirius' encounter had been told by an animagus; an American named Smith who transformed into a horse.  Smith's werewolf claimed to have a clearer mind when the horse was around; things seemed more rational like he was a human again.  Smith also discovered that as an animagus he was not harmed by werewolf bites; only humans were affected if bitten.  The wheels in Sirius' head slowly started to turn and he resolved that he and James would become animagi.  The only reason Peter was becoming one as well was because he overheard Sirius explaining his plan to James and threatened to tell everyone; so in order to shut him up they let him in on their scheme.

            Remus had no idea about any of this, of course.  He was currently sleeping as if he had just been given a sleeping draught.  He was such a deep sleeper that he didn't even wake up when Peter tripped over Sirius' collection of wind chimes, which he insisted on taking everywhere.  The other three Marauders planned on surprising Remus.  They wanted to have it ready for the next full moon in a few days.

            The three walked along, heading for a room in the dungeons they had come across earlier in the year.  They walked along the charms corridor, quietly as possible.  As one, they leaned against a tapestry of the Muses as they heard a shuffling of feet.  Before they could identify the owner of the feet, however, they fell backwards through the tapestry and into a secret passageway.

            "What's this?" said James, looking around the dark sidetrack with a quizzical look on his face.

            Sirius pulled a map out of his pocket.  "We don't have it on here.  Let's see where it goes so we can add it."

            The other two nodded in assent.  Sirius and James lit their wands and led the way down the dark corridor with Peter trailing behind.

            "You know, we should make the map so it shows everyone in the castle, you know?  So we know if someone is coming and we have to hide or something."

            "That's a really good idea, Pete," said Sirius, slightly surprised.  Peter wasn't known for being the brightest fairy light on the string.

            A few minutes later they stepped out of the passageway and found themselves right across from the dungeon stairs.  After stopping for a moment so James could sketch in the passageway on the map, they proceeded towards the secret room.  Sirius stopped them near a china vase and pulled out his wand.  He counted the seventh brick to the left of it and tapped it three times with his wand.  Just like in Diagon Alley, a small hole appeared and grew into an arched doorway.  But instead of revealing a street full of interesting shops and whatnot, it opened into a cramped little room in which a neon blue concoction was simmering.

            James threw off the cloak and stepped up to the cauldron, taking a book out from his robes.

            "Right, all we need to add now is a bit of the animal we're going to transform into. And then say the chant."

            Half the reason it took so long for them to get everything ready was because it took a great deal of time to get a bit of what they were turning into.  Peter's was easy because they kept rat-tails in the student's store cupboard.  A rat was small, so it wasn't too hard to make the transformation.  He couldn't have turned into a much larger animal; plus they needed someone to hold the knot on the Whomping Willow while the other two entered the tunnel.  Sirius had bought his bit in an apothecary in Hogsmeade.  It was one of the footpads of a Newfoundland.  He decided to be a bigger animal so he could keep Remus in check if things got out of hand.  James' was a bit trickier.  He spent hours combing the Forbidden Forest with Sirius looking for his bit.  Finally, during their third expedition, Sirius found it.  He had tripped and fallen into a puddle of mud.  Looking to see what had happened, he found that he had stumbled over the skull of a stag.  He gave it to James, who had taken it by an antler and smashed it against a tree so he only had part of the antler.

            Each of the boys now took out their respective ingredient and dropped them into three goblets.  Peter then ladled the potion into each goblet and the final ingredients dissolved.  James downed the entire disgusting mixture in one gulp.  He felt a shiver run down his spine, but nothing happened.

            "Why haven't we changed?" said Peter looking around.

            "We haven't said the chant yet," explained James.

            "Do we have to do it every time we want to change?" he asked, not sure if he could remember it all.

            "No, you just have to concentrate."

            Peter breathed a sigh of relief and then another thought hit him.  "Does it hurt?"

            "We won't know unless we say the chant," Sirius said slowly, as if he were speaking to a very small child.

            "Ready?" said James, "O.K., here goes.  Verto me Cervus (muris, Canis)…  Verto me Cervus (muris, Canis)…  Verto me  Cervus (muris, Canis)…  Verto me  Cervus (muris, Canis)…  Verto me Cervus (muris, Canis)…  Verto me Cervus (muris, Canis)…  Verto me Cervus (muris, Canis)."

            All of a sudden, he fell onto all fours.  He felt his arms and legs lengthen and his feet and hands turned into hard, heavy hooves.  Two sharp jabs on his head told him that his antlers were growing and he saw his face lengthen and his peach fuzz grow into fur.

            And then it stopped.  He blinked and looked around.  He saw Sirius sniffing himself and Peter running around in circles.  He laughed, but it came out as a snort.  Sirius looked up and started wagging his tail.  Clearly he had just realised the advantages of being an unregistered animagus.  James shook his head and started trying to change back.  He pictured himself in his human form and waited.  With a small pop he was back to normal.  Sirius soon followed suit.

            "This is going to be so great!" he cried.

            "SHH!  Just remember, we're doing this for Remus," James reminded him.

            A panicked squeaking met their ears as they realised Peter had failed to transform back.  He was running around franticly, running into things.  After looking in the book, Sirius said, "We have to point our wands at him and picture his as a human."

            James pulled out his wand, and on the count of three blue light emitted from both wands and fell on Peter.  Like a tree growing, Peter turned from rat to boy right in front of their eyes.

            "I guess I'll have to work on changing back, eh?" he laughed nervously.

            The other two simply nodded.

            "It's getting late, we'd better head back," said James.

            All three of them got back under the invisibility cloak, extremely satisfied with what they had just accomplished.

"Hey, you know how we call Remus 'Moony' sometimes?" Sirius whispered on the way back.

            James could only think of about four or five occasions when they had called Remus "Moony," but he nodded anyway in a vain attempt to shut Sirius up.

            "Well, I thought we could have names too!" he said excitedly.  "Peter could be 'Wormtail' because he used a tail in his potion (and I thought it looked sort of like a worm), I could be 'Padfoot' because I that's what I used, and you could be 'Prongs' or something!

            James chuckled as they reached the common room.  "Code names for the Marauders…  Oh God."

*A/N* So how'd you like it?  You could always tell me in a review (hint hint, nudge nudge)!  Like I've said, I changed it a bit from before (like changing the chant into Latin instead of Spanish!).  I know that they're only in fourth year, but as I was reading PoA for the bazillionth time, Remus said that it took three years to make.  Of course I didn't read much further because I was just kind of skimming (oops!).  Plus it's my story, so there!  If you don't like it you can write your own!  Only joking.  Coming up next:  A trip to Hogsmeade and a special performance by Hyper Princess!  Oh, and this chapter's Reviewer's Challenge is this:  Who is a bigger god: Paul McCartney or John Entwistle, and why?  THIS IS NOT AN OPINION!!!  Muahaha, Jeana!  You'll never get this!!!