Living A Legend
Book 1- A Clash of Wills
Chapter 17- Secret Admiration and Animagi
Lily's old worries were brought to the surface when Remus disappeared one day. Teachers assured the students that he was just visiting a sick relative, but Lily had her doubts. It seemed to her that Remus disappeared all to often, and each time he returned covered in scratches.
That evening, Lily and Dora were in the Library, as usual, when they saw three of the Marauders snooping about. Even Dora was suspicious. "What are they doing in here? They never study," she said.
Determined to ignore them, Lily insisted that they finish their Herbology homework, and stop worrying about the whereabouts of idiots like James, Sirius and Peter.
But when Sirius suddenly darted behind a bookshelf when the librarian approached and managed to knock over three fourth year girls and a huge pile of books in the process, the girls couldn't help but take notice.
James hurried over and tried to help out his friend, while Peter tried to hide a large stack of books under his shirt.
"Do you need any help?" Mister Bluff, the librarian asked.
"No!" Sirius shouted a bit loudly. Everyone in the library who wasn't already watching the scene turned at his cry and watched Sirius humiliate himself further. "We're not looking for anything! Why would you think that? We just came for the chicks! Yeah that's it."
James began to bang his head against a bookshelf in frustration.
Sirius looked about guiltily and an idea dawned on him. He leaped up onto a table (as he was in the habit of doing) and turned to face the room. "LADIES!" He shouted, "HAVE NO FEAR, SIRIUS BLACK IS HERE!"
"So much for being subtle," James muttered just loud enough for Lily to catch it.
Suddenly there came a loud crash and all eyes turned to Peter, who had been attempting to smuggle out the books that he had crammed up his shirt, when he had ran straight into a chair and spilled his books, promptly tripping over them and knocking down and entire bookshelf.
Mister Bluff, put his head in his hands and began to moan.
"I know, I know, we'll escort ourselves out!" Sirius proclaimed, before taking a bow and sadly waving goodbye to the ladies, most of whom were in hysterics.
"Not so fast!" Bluff demanded, grabbing Sirius by the arm. "You sir I am assigning a detention. You can help me minimize the damage you and your friends have done to my poor library."
Dora, like the rest of the students present, had her head in her hands and was shaking with laughter. Lily however was seething.
"I know they're up to something! Urrgh, they make me so mad sometimes! I wish they would just be normal. They're a disgrace to our house!" Lily fumed for about half an hour, before she finally was able to get back to her studies.
Lily thought no more about the incident in the library until later that night, when she came across three of the Marauders huddled in a corner of the common room and speaking in whispers.
Being as stealthy as she could, Lily snuck up on them and popped up behind James's head. "Whatcha doin?" she blurted out and smiled as they all jumped three feet in the air.
Sirius and Peter dove simultaneously on top of a book that they were looking at and the result was that they ran headlong into each other. James smiled so widely that if Lily's felt her suspicions were justified.
"Why Lily! What are you doing here on this fine evening. I'm sure you have some studying or something to do, so you might as well get going. See you!" James waved vigorously as Peter and Sirius rubbed their foreheads miserably.
Lily was not deterred that easily. She leaned over farther, despite James's attempts to block her.
"Famous Animagi In History," Lily read off the cover of the book. "And Werewolves: Friend or Foe. What are you boys on about?"
Sirius punched Peter in the arm lightly. "You were supposed to be guarding it!" he hissed.
James only smiled even wider and threw an arm over Lily's shoulders.
She tried to fight him off, but he ushered her away forcefully, his huge fake smile never leaving his face. "Fly away, little red head! Go do whatever it is red heads do!" he urged.
Lily eyed him strangely. "Fine. Have fun reading your book. You took so much trouble to get it. You could have just went up and checked it out, but since you always have to do it the hard way, go right ahead!" She threw up her arms in frustration and went upstairs to join Brittany and Dora.
Remus returned from wherever he had gone, the next morning. Lily not surprised that his face and arms were covered in scratches and he had deep circles under his eyes. He smiled at Lily wearily when he saw her, looking exhausted beyond belief.
For once Lily smiled back without insulting or mocking him. She wondered if perhaps he had a relative who abused him, but it just didn't seem to add up. Why did he keep leaving every month?
Things got even weirder in Charms class. It seemed that the other Marauders were ignoring him. James, Sirius and even Peter kept whispering conspiratorially through the whole class until finally Professor Feldman had to reprimand them. Remus seemed to notice this too, and kept his head down, looking dejected.
At lunch too, Lily noticed that the other Marauders did not wait for Remus, quickly eating and heading off somewhere alone, leaving him alone with the girls. Lily was slightly perturbed with the other boys and felt sorry for Remus, so she struck up a conversation about the other boys strange behavior the other day.
"They created a huge disturbance at the library. They wanted some books I guess, but I don't know why they didn't just check them out!" she filled him in. "And then, I caught them in the common room reading! Since when do Sirius and James read? I didn't think they even knew how. And when I caught them, they panicked and tried to hide the books. I thought maybe they were reading up on prank spells, but the books were about Animagi and werewolves." Lily rolled her eyes and failed to notice how pale Remus had gone.
"I've got to go!" Remus said abruptly and pushed his way out of the cafeteria leaving a very baffled Lily, Brittany and Dora in his wake.
That night Lily tried to catch the Marauders doing something strange again, but they seemed to be evading her. She wanted to go bed early, eager to catch up on sleep, and tired of dealing with her petty problems.
Yawning, Lily pulled aside the curtains obscuring her four poster bed. Lily was glad she was a girl, the boy's dorms didn't have curtains. She discarded her comforter and something clattered to the floor. Lily started in surprise and then saw that it was a gift box with a card, wrapped in gold paper with a red bow on top.
Jackie Lyda looked over at Lily and grinned. "Who's it from? It was here when I came up."
Lily shrugged and took off the card.
"Dearest Lily,
I have watched you from afar since the first time I saw you. You are as beautiful as an angel. I do not have the courage to tell you my name, but I do have the courage to give you this gift, as a token of my feelings for you.
Love,
Your Secret Admirer"
Lily read the letter slowly and felt a tinge of warmth creeping up her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was a secret admirer. Reluctantly, Lily unwrapped the present and found a small velvet box.
"Uh-oh," Lily whispered, afraid of what she would find within.
After steadying herself with a deep breath, Lily popped open the box, only to find a beautiful silver ring with a tiny red stone in the middle. She gasped, trying to hide the ring from view of Jackie, but failing as the nosy girl ran over and peer at it in admiration.
Jackie grabbed the card and insisted on reading it aloud and sighing dramatically over it. "Oh Lily! You are so lucky! How come you are not more excited? I bet it's James," Jackie gushed.
Lily made a face at this last suggestion. "Ew! I hope it's not James. If it was I'd probably have to kill him."
This statement shocked Jackie, who admitted that she had a crush on James. Lily responded to this statement by pretending to vomit. But Lily finally agreed to wear the ring at Jackie's insistence.
"Fine, I'll wear it, if it will make you leave me alone!" Lily had shouted, exasperated before sinking into her bed.
She was woken up several hours later by Brittany and Dora who had seen the card and heard the story from Jackie and wanted to gossip and speculate about it with Lily herself.
"Leemealone," Lily moaned. "I want some sleep. So what I got a present from some random person I don't even know. It's no big deal anyway."
Brittany and Dora exchanged a glance. "Well you're wearing it aren't you!" Brittany cried.
"For the last time, let me sleep or I'll annoy the hell out of you tomorrow!" Lily threatened and after about ten more attempted interrogations, Brittany and Dora finally gave up.
Lily swore her friends to secrecy the next morning before any of them left the dorm. She hid the card and the jewelry box deep inside her bag, but she did walk downstairs with the ring on her finger, at Jackie and Brittany's insistence.
Jackie Lyda seemed to be taking a lot more interest in Lily, now that Lily had a romantic interest (if her secret admirer could be called that).
Despite Lily's attempt to hush up the events of the previous night, when she arrived at breakfast, word had already gotten out.
"So Lily," Sirius nudged her, "When's the engagement?"
"Never!" Lily yelled. "I didn't even want the stupid thing!"
James and Sirius laughed, but Remus only pointed out that she was wearing it after all. Lily then attempted to tear the ring off her finger and toss it across the room, but Jackie Lyda appeared from out of nowhere and tutted her tongue disapprovingly, sliding the ring back onto Lily's finger.
"Is Jackie going to be your maid of honor Lily?" Sirius asked seriously.
"It's not an engagement ring, and I don't even know the guy!" Lily screamed, flying into a rage easily.
James smiled slyly and eyed the ring, and Lily braced herself for whatever he was going to say, but nothing came.
Finally Lily burst out, "What is it James? Say what you are going to say and be done with it!"
James swallowed and spoke quickly in a dry tone of voice, "I was only going to say, please pass the bacon Lily."
Lily stared at him in astonishment. His lack of teasing astounded her. This was not normal James behavior.
"Uh, the bacon please?" James asked again when the meat had failed to make it's way down the table.
Dora smiled sweetly and passed the meat, when Lily failed again to react in what might be considered an appropriate manner. "You're so daft James!" Lily shouted, without knowing why, and then realized that she wanted some bacon as well.
If the Marauders had expected the Slytherins not to retaliate, they would have been very shocked one Sunday morning when they awoke to find something amiss. But being the troublesome Marauders they were, they had been anticipating revenge ever since their milk prank had gone off without a hitch.
It seemed as if Devin's threat had been empty, because the revenge came compliments of Terrance and Lucius.
So of course, the Marauders were not in the least worried when they woke up with bleached blond hair.
"Rather juvenile," James commented dryly as he pointed his want and restored his hair easily. "Must be the work of first years."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Honestly James, I would have expected better than that. Restoro!" He pointed his wand and muttered the spell to restore his natural hair color.
It turned out that the entire Gryffindor house, including Professor Lacy woke up with bleached blond hair. But no one, not even Lily was terribly upset over it.
Even the least skilled of wizards knew how to restore hair color, and the ones who couldn't, like Dora, relied on their friends to fix it.
Only Peter, chose to keep his hairstyle. "Not so fast guys!" He had protested, "I look good as a blond!"
Lily was for once one of the first Gryffindors to enter the Dining hall, her red hair intact. She saw the Slytherin first years snickering to themselves. They looked a bit disappointed when they saw the girls without any remnants of blond hair.
The pathetic prank was not even enough to send Lily into one of her rages. Instead she just laughed at them along with Brittany and Dora.
Terrance and Malfoy looked terribly disappointed as the Gryffindors entered the Dining hall one by one, none of them looking much worse for the wear.
When Peter entered with his obnoxiously blond hair-do, they had finally found their target. The two Slytherins strode over to the Marauders with smirks on their faces.
"Well, well, well," Malfoy drawled. "What have we here? Oh look, it's the chubbiest Marauder, and look at his hair!" The two boys proceeded to squirm with laughter while the rest of the school looked on with distaste.
"Why thank you Malfoy," Peter responded pleasantly. "I rather like it. I do think I look good as a blond."
The other students nodded and smiled as Malfoy's smirk was wiped from his face.
Then James stood, the image of cool, "That was a rather pathetic attempt at a prank, don't you think."
The rest of the school began to shake their heads in agreement and mutter, "Pathetic".
Sirius stood as well and shook his head sadly. "I really expected better from you than that. It was more amusing than anything. Gave me a laugh at least. I just hope you have learned a lesson from this. You really shouldn't mess with people who are out of your league."
Sirius waggled his eyebrows at the two seething Slytherins, who attempted to mutter a comeback, but failed miserably and retreated very quickly over to the Slytherin table, where they were met with still more glares and ill will.
With a dramatic sigh, Remus muttered, "Ah, when will they learn? They are just no match for the Marauders."
For once, Lily had to agree.
Unfortunately for the Marauders, and the girls who happened to be lab partners with them, the two disgraced Slytherins made every attempt possible to get even during Potions.
Malfoy walked by Lily and James's cauldron and casually dropped some sulfur powder inside, which with the present ingredients would soon result in the equivalent of a dung bomb. Luckily Lily acted quickly and added just the right amount of root of Angola Mushroom, which cancelled sulfurous effects. James breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god you're such a nerd Lily. You just saved our lives."
Lily took offense, (when did she not?), but decided wisely not to act on it.
Malfoy, meanwhile had attempted to hex Sirius's eyebrows off. Sirius fell target to the spell, with humorous results, but the Gryffindor flew into a rage and leaped atop Malfoy, forcing him to drink some of Sirius's laxative Potion, which the class had been brewing.
Sirius's potion of course, was ridiculously strong, and immediately Malfoy clutched his stomach and began to moan, before dashing off to the lavaratory as quickly as possible.
Ludwick, caught the fiasco however, and assigned Sirius a detention. As soon as Ludwick had delivered this news, which he himself thought would cause Sirius some misery, Sirius cheered wildly and dashed over to envelop James in a gigantic bear hug. "I'm beating you Jamsie! I've got one more detention than you!"
"Black! That will be another detention for you obnoxious display!" Ludwick screeched, not understanding why Sirius was not showing suitable distress.
With that, Sirius proceed to break into a happy dance, which caused the class to be affected with various degrees of mirth.
Then, just to get even, James jumped up atop a desk and pointed his wand at Ludwick's face, muttering a spell which caused the teacher to sprout rabbit ears atop his head and his front to teeth to extend alarmingly.
Not to be outdone by the other two, Remus stood and cast a spell to turn Ludwick's robes a brilliant pink.
Sputtering mad, Ludwick assigned both boys a detention each, but the eyebrowless Sirius was parading around, the reigning king until Ludwick raised his wand and a loud boom echoed, which stunned the class into silence.
"Enough!" Ludwick yelled, restoring himself instantly. "The next person to say a word will be expelled!"
James climbed down from the table quickly and Sirius stopped dancing.
"This is an outrage!" The Potions Master fumed. "I want a ten foot scroll on the properties of monkswood by tomorrow!"
At this pronouncement, the entire class groaned, and the gazes of admiration directed at the Marauders turned to intense dislike. Lily slapped James across the face, and Brittany made a growling sound in the direction of Remus.
"It's not fair!" Snape suddenly whined. "I didn't do anything!"
Ludwick turned on him in an instant, and Severus shrunk back in fear. "A detention for you as well, for your cheek."
While Lily tried to dissuade Jackie from investigating Lily's secret admirer, James, Sirius and Remus were busy mowing the Quidditch field by hand, which was truly an arduous task to take on between the three of them.
The three Marauders were debating whether or not to leave a message for the school on the Quidditch field.
"I say we do it the last day of school. We could write Snape plus Malfoy equals love forever," Sirius envisioned.
"But would it disrupt Quidditch?" James asked cautiously.
"Nah! Quidditch season is over in May anyway. We can just wait until then," Remus reasoned. "It would be better if we did it then, rather than on the last day, because then the school would have a chance to see it."
"Wait! The last Gryffindor Quidditch match is against Slytherin. Why don't we write it the night before the match! We could write something like Go Home Slytherin!"
James beamed at his friend. "That would be great! But you don't think they'll cancel the match?"
Sirius shook his head. "No way! They don't actually play on the field so it would be fine!" he assured James.
"So it's a plan?" Remus asked his friends.
They all nodded happily.
Book 1- A Clash of Wills
Chapter 17- Secret Admiration and Animagi
Lily's old worries were brought to the surface when Remus disappeared one day. Teachers assured the students that he was just visiting a sick relative, but Lily had her doubts. It seemed to her that Remus disappeared all to often, and each time he returned covered in scratches.
That evening, Lily and Dora were in the Library, as usual, when they saw three of the Marauders snooping about. Even Dora was suspicious. "What are they doing in here? They never study," she said.
Determined to ignore them, Lily insisted that they finish their Herbology homework, and stop worrying about the whereabouts of idiots like James, Sirius and Peter.
But when Sirius suddenly darted behind a bookshelf when the librarian approached and managed to knock over three fourth year girls and a huge pile of books in the process, the girls couldn't help but take notice.
James hurried over and tried to help out his friend, while Peter tried to hide a large stack of books under his shirt.
"Do you need any help?" Mister Bluff, the librarian asked.
"No!" Sirius shouted a bit loudly. Everyone in the library who wasn't already watching the scene turned at his cry and watched Sirius humiliate himself further. "We're not looking for anything! Why would you think that? We just came for the chicks! Yeah that's it."
James began to bang his head against a bookshelf in frustration.
Sirius looked about guiltily and an idea dawned on him. He leaped up onto a table (as he was in the habit of doing) and turned to face the room. "LADIES!" He shouted, "HAVE NO FEAR, SIRIUS BLACK IS HERE!"
"So much for being subtle," James muttered just loud enough for Lily to catch it.
Suddenly there came a loud crash and all eyes turned to Peter, who had been attempting to smuggle out the books that he had crammed up his shirt, when he had ran straight into a chair and spilled his books, promptly tripping over them and knocking down and entire bookshelf.
Mister Bluff, put his head in his hands and began to moan.
"I know, I know, we'll escort ourselves out!" Sirius proclaimed, before taking a bow and sadly waving goodbye to the ladies, most of whom were in hysterics.
"Not so fast!" Bluff demanded, grabbing Sirius by the arm. "You sir I am assigning a detention. You can help me minimize the damage you and your friends have done to my poor library."
Dora, like the rest of the students present, had her head in her hands and was shaking with laughter. Lily however was seething.
"I know they're up to something! Urrgh, they make me so mad sometimes! I wish they would just be normal. They're a disgrace to our house!" Lily fumed for about half an hour, before she finally was able to get back to her studies.
Lily thought no more about the incident in the library until later that night, when she came across three of the Marauders huddled in a corner of the common room and speaking in whispers.
Being as stealthy as she could, Lily snuck up on them and popped up behind James's head. "Whatcha doin?" she blurted out and smiled as they all jumped three feet in the air.
Sirius and Peter dove simultaneously on top of a book that they were looking at and the result was that they ran headlong into each other. James smiled so widely that if Lily's felt her suspicions were justified.
"Why Lily! What are you doing here on this fine evening. I'm sure you have some studying or something to do, so you might as well get going. See you!" James waved vigorously as Peter and Sirius rubbed their foreheads miserably.
Lily was not deterred that easily. She leaned over farther, despite James's attempts to block her.
"Famous Animagi In History," Lily read off the cover of the book. "And Werewolves: Friend or Foe. What are you boys on about?"
Sirius punched Peter in the arm lightly. "You were supposed to be guarding it!" he hissed.
James only smiled even wider and threw an arm over Lily's shoulders.
She tried to fight him off, but he ushered her away forcefully, his huge fake smile never leaving his face. "Fly away, little red head! Go do whatever it is red heads do!" he urged.
Lily eyed him strangely. "Fine. Have fun reading your book. You took so much trouble to get it. You could have just went up and checked it out, but since you always have to do it the hard way, go right ahead!" She threw up her arms in frustration and went upstairs to join Brittany and Dora.
Remus returned from wherever he had gone, the next morning. Lily not surprised that his face and arms were covered in scratches and he had deep circles under his eyes. He smiled at Lily wearily when he saw her, looking exhausted beyond belief.
For once Lily smiled back without insulting or mocking him. She wondered if perhaps he had a relative who abused him, but it just didn't seem to add up. Why did he keep leaving every month?
Things got even weirder in Charms class. It seemed that the other Marauders were ignoring him. James, Sirius and even Peter kept whispering conspiratorially through the whole class until finally Professor Feldman had to reprimand them. Remus seemed to notice this too, and kept his head down, looking dejected.
At lunch too, Lily noticed that the other Marauders did not wait for Remus, quickly eating and heading off somewhere alone, leaving him alone with the girls. Lily was slightly perturbed with the other boys and felt sorry for Remus, so she struck up a conversation about the other boys strange behavior the other day.
"They created a huge disturbance at the library. They wanted some books I guess, but I don't know why they didn't just check them out!" she filled him in. "And then, I caught them in the common room reading! Since when do Sirius and James read? I didn't think they even knew how. And when I caught them, they panicked and tried to hide the books. I thought maybe they were reading up on prank spells, but the books were about Animagi and werewolves." Lily rolled her eyes and failed to notice how pale Remus had gone.
"I've got to go!" Remus said abruptly and pushed his way out of the cafeteria leaving a very baffled Lily, Brittany and Dora in his wake.
That night Lily tried to catch the Marauders doing something strange again, but they seemed to be evading her. She wanted to go bed early, eager to catch up on sleep, and tired of dealing with her petty problems.
Yawning, Lily pulled aside the curtains obscuring her four poster bed. Lily was glad she was a girl, the boy's dorms didn't have curtains. She discarded her comforter and something clattered to the floor. Lily started in surprise and then saw that it was a gift box with a card, wrapped in gold paper with a red bow on top.
Jackie Lyda looked over at Lily and grinned. "Who's it from? It was here when I came up."
Lily shrugged and took off the card.
"Dearest Lily,
I have watched you from afar since the first time I saw you. You are as beautiful as an angel. I do not have the courage to tell you my name, but I do have the courage to give you this gift, as a token of my feelings for you.
Love,
Your Secret Admirer"
Lily read the letter slowly and felt a tinge of warmth creeping up her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was a secret admirer. Reluctantly, Lily unwrapped the present and found a small velvet box.
"Uh-oh," Lily whispered, afraid of what she would find within.
After steadying herself with a deep breath, Lily popped open the box, only to find a beautiful silver ring with a tiny red stone in the middle. She gasped, trying to hide the ring from view of Jackie, but failing as the nosy girl ran over and peer at it in admiration.
Jackie grabbed the card and insisted on reading it aloud and sighing dramatically over it. "Oh Lily! You are so lucky! How come you are not more excited? I bet it's James," Jackie gushed.
Lily made a face at this last suggestion. "Ew! I hope it's not James. If it was I'd probably have to kill him."
This statement shocked Jackie, who admitted that she had a crush on James. Lily responded to this statement by pretending to vomit. But Lily finally agreed to wear the ring at Jackie's insistence.
"Fine, I'll wear it, if it will make you leave me alone!" Lily had shouted, exasperated before sinking into her bed.
She was woken up several hours later by Brittany and Dora who had seen the card and heard the story from Jackie and wanted to gossip and speculate about it with Lily herself.
"Leemealone," Lily moaned. "I want some sleep. So what I got a present from some random person I don't even know. It's no big deal anyway."
Brittany and Dora exchanged a glance. "Well you're wearing it aren't you!" Brittany cried.
"For the last time, let me sleep or I'll annoy the hell out of you tomorrow!" Lily threatened and after about ten more attempted interrogations, Brittany and Dora finally gave up.
Lily swore her friends to secrecy the next morning before any of them left the dorm. She hid the card and the jewelry box deep inside her bag, but she did walk downstairs with the ring on her finger, at Jackie and Brittany's insistence.
Jackie Lyda seemed to be taking a lot more interest in Lily, now that Lily had a romantic interest (if her secret admirer could be called that).
Despite Lily's attempt to hush up the events of the previous night, when she arrived at breakfast, word had already gotten out.
"So Lily," Sirius nudged her, "When's the engagement?"
"Never!" Lily yelled. "I didn't even want the stupid thing!"
James and Sirius laughed, but Remus only pointed out that she was wearing it after all. Lily then attempted to tear the ring off her finger and toss it across the room, but Jackie Lyda appeared from out of nowhere and tutted her tongue disapprovingly, sliding the ring back onto Lily's finger.
"Is Jackie going to be your maid of honor Lily?" Sirius asked seriously.
"It's not an engagement ring, and I don't even know the guy!" Lily screamed, flying into a rage easily.
James smiled slyly and eyed the ring, and Lily braced herself for whatever he was going to say, but nothing came.
Finally Lily burst out, "What is it James? Say what you are going to say and be done with it!"
James swallowed and spoke quickly in a dry tone of voice, "I was only going to say, please pass the bacon Lily."
Lily stared at him in astonishment. His lack of teasing astounded her. This was not normal James behavior.
"Uh, the bacon please?" James asked again when the meat had failed to make it's way down the table.
Dora smiled sweetly and passed the meat, when Lily failed again to react in what might be considered an appropriate manner. "You're so daft James!" Lily shouted, without knowing why, and then realized that she wanted some bacon as well.
If the Marauders had expected the Slytherins not to retaliate, they would have been very shocked one Sunday morning when they awoke to find something amiss. But being the troublesome Marauders they were, they had been anticipating revenge ever since their milk prank had gone off without a hitch.
It seemed as if Devin's threat had been empty, because the revenge came compliments of Terrance and Lucius.
So of course, the Marauders were not in the least worried when they woke up with bleached blond hair.
"Rather juvenile," James commented dryly as he pointed his want and restored his hair easily. "Must be the work of first years."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Honestly James, I would have expected better than that. Restoro!" He pointed his wand and muttered the spell to restore his natural hair color.
It turned out that the entire Gryffindor house, including Professor Lacy woke up with bleached blond hair. But no one, not even Lily was terribly upset over it.
Even the least skilled of wizards knew how to restore hair color, and the ones who couldn't, like Dora, relied on their friends to fix it.
Only Peter, chose to keep his hairstyle. "Not so fast guys!" He had protested, "I look good as a blond!"
Lily was for once one of the first Gryffindors to enter the Dining hall, her red hair intact. She saw the Slytherin first years snickering to themselves. They looked a bit disappointed when they saw the girls without any remnants of blond hair.
The pathetic prank was not even enough to send Lily into one of her rages. Instead she just laughed at them along with Brittany and Dora.
Terrance and Malfoy looked terribly disappointed as the Gryffindors entered the Dining hall one by one, none of them looking much worse for the wear.
When Peter entered with his obnoxiously blond hair-do, they had finally found their target. The two Slytherins strode over to the Marauders with smirks on their faces.
"Well, well, well," Malfoy drawled. "What have we here? Oh look, it's the chubbiest Marauder, and look at his hair!" The two boys proceeded to squirm with laughter while the rest of the school looked on with distaste.
"Why thank you Malfoy," Peter responded pleasantly. "I rather like it. I do think I look good as a blond."
The other students nodded and smiled as Malfoy's smirk was wiped from his face.
Then James stood, the image of cool, "That was a rather pathetic attempt at a prank, don't you think."
The rest of the school began to shake their heads in agreement and mutter, "Pathetic".
Sirius stood as well and shook his head sadly. "I really expected better from you than that. It was more amusing than anything. Gave me a laugh at least. I just hope you have learned a lesson from this. You really shouldn't mess with people who are out of your league."
Sirius waggled his eyebrows at the two seething Slytherins, who attempted to mutter a comeback, but failed miserably and retreated very quickly over to the Slytherin table, where they were met with still more glares and ill will.
With a dramatic sigh, Remus muttered, "Ah, when will they learn? They are just no match for the Marauders."
For once, Lily had to agree.
Unfortunately for the Marauders, and the girls who happened to be lab partners with them, the two disgraced Slytherins made every attempt possible to get even during Potions.
Malfoy walked by Lily and James's cauldron and casually dropped some sulfur powder inside, which with the present ingredients would soon result in the equivalent of a dung bomb. Luckily Lily acted quickly and added just the right amount of root of Angola Mushroom, which cancelled sulfurous effects. James breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god you're such a nerd Lily. You just saved our lives."
Lily took offense, (when did she not?), but decided wisely not to act on it.
Malfoy, meanwhile had attempted to hex Sirius's eyebrows off. Sirius fell target to the spell, with humorous results, but the Gryffindor flew into a rage and leaped atop Malfoy, forcing him to drink some of Sirius's laxative Potion, which the class had been brewing.
Sirius's potion of course, was ridiculously strong, and immediately Malfoy clutched his stomach and began to moan, before dashing off to the lavaratory as quickly as possible.
Ludwick, caught the fiasco however, and assigned Sirius a detention. As soon as Ludwick had delivered this news, which he himself thought would cause Sirius some misery, Sirius cheered wildly and dashed over to envelop James in a gigantic bear hug. "I'm beating you Jamsie! I've got one more detention than you!"
"Black! That will be another detention for you obnoxious display!" Ludwick screeched, not understanding why Sirius was not showing suitable distress.
With that, Sirius proceed to break into a happy dance, which caused the class to be affected with various degrees of mirth.
Then, just to get even, James jumped up atop a desk and pointed his wand at Ludwick's face, muttering a spell which caused the teacher to sprout rabbit ears atop his head and his front to teeth to extend alarmingly.
Not to be outdone by the other two, Remus stood and cast a spell to turn Ludwick's robes a brilliant pink.
Sputtering mad, Ludwick assigned both boys a detention each, but the eyebrowless Sirius was parading around, the reigning king until Ludwick raised his wand and a loud boom echoed, which stunned the class into silence.
"Enough!" Ludwick yelled, restoring himself instantly. "The next person to say a word will be expelled!"
James climbed down from the table quickly and Sirius stopped dancing.
"This is an outrage!" The Potions Master fumed. "I want a ten foot scroll on the properties of monkswood by tomorrow!"
At this pronouncement, the entire class groaned, and the gazes of admiration directed at the Marauders turned to intense dislike. Lily slapped James across the face, and Brittany made a growling sound in the direction of Remus.
"It's not fair!" Snape suddenly whined. "I didn't do anything!"
Ludwick turned on him in an instant, and Severus shrunk back in fear. "A detention for you as well, for your cheek."
While Lily tried to dissuade Jackie from investigating Lily's secret admirer, James, Sirius and Remus were busy mowing the Quidditch field by hand, which was truly an arduous task to take on between the three of them.
The three Marauders were debating whether or not to leave a message for the school on the Quidditch field.
"I say we do it the last day of school. We could write Snape plus Malfoy equals love forever," Sirius envisioned.
"But would it disrupt Quidditch?" James asked cautiously.
"Nah! Quidditch season is over in May anyway. We can just wait until then," Remus reasoned. "It would be better if we did it then, rather than on the last day, because then the school would have a chance to see it."
"Wait! The last Gryffindor Quidditch match is against Slytherin. Why don't we write it the night before the match! We could write something like Go Home Slytherin!"
James beamed at his friend. "That would be great! But you don't think they'll cancel the match?"
Sirius shook his head. "No way! They don't actually play on the field so it would be fine!" he assured James.
"So it's a plan?" Remus asked his friends.
They all nodded happily.