Once again, I am so so sorry this has taken so long. I started writing it ages ago, but never got round to posting it, one of the main reasons being that most of the prank ideas in this chapter aren't mine, but I can't find the place where I found them. The main point really, is that they aren't mine, I've just borrowed some ideas. If anyone finds the place where I found them, let me know and I'll give them full credit here. Thanks.

Marl

Black curtains shut out a golden summer dawn, casting an illusion of eternal night and throwing all into eerie shadow. Books and pictures lined the walls, the cluttered paraphernalia of a life crammed into two chambers. For those who had seen it, it looked very much like the Hall of Dreams, but there was an air of melancholy and loneliness that the place of the Lupuscans simply did not have.

In this dark, reflective environment an irregularity in breathing heralded the reawakening of Severus Snape into the conscious world.

He sighed loudly, loath to leave his comfortable bed for the countless petty annoyances of a school teacher. The sudden prickling sensation of pins and needles coursed painfully up his arm from where he'd slept on it, making him curse to himself.

He closed his eyes, making the darkness absolute, and rolled over onto his right side. When he opened them again he found himself staring eye to eye with Storm, even though hers were closed in peaceful sleep.

A startled yell escaped his lips. Storm's azure eyes flew open and an equally loud scream of shock broke from her throat, and the fright made her slip straight off the side of the bed and become half entangled in the surrounding drapes on the way down before landing painfully on the bare floor.

She'd been dreaming of better things on the most comfortable bed she'd slept on in years and received the shock of her life when dragged out of quiet slumber by Snape's yells and opened her eyes to see his face only inches from her own.

Severus leapt out of bed and ran for the door to the sitting room. Storm dashed clumsily past him, scrabbling the main door open and bounding quadrupedaly down the golden lit hallways.

Severus slumped on a black leather armchair and reached for his emergency bottle of firewhiskey to calm his jangling nerves.

Once down in her dungeon Storm was overcome by an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Remembering the circumstances of how and why she got into Severus's boudoir made the situation rather amusing, especially when the result had been better than she'd expected. Digging something out from under her old blanket, she chuckled maliciously at the thought.

He was going to pay for what he had done to her almost sixteen years ago – in kind if she could swing it. An eye for an eye, blood for blood, but for now humiliation would be enough.

Remus sat with his wolfy friend, Storm, in the recently deserted classroom. Since the Versipellis incident she'd gradually begun sitting in on his lessons again. He'd missed her company while she was absent, but she seemed a lot more relaxed now and listened a lot more calmly.

He felt that she was taking in a lot more than his students were, especially at the end of the year, but he thought he'd even caught the slight ghost of a smile when he'd been explaining to the third years about the prejudices towards werewolves, a condition he was all too familiar with.

'This is the hardest thing I have to teach because it is not about facts or knowledge. It is about your own feelings towards others, and the value of friendship. The best words I ever found on the subject were given to me by a very good friend when I was not much older than you are now.

'Back then I experienced a great fear of revealing what I was because of the prejudice I would incur, and sometimes I still feel that way. When she came up to me after finding out what I was I wanted the earth to simply open up and swallow me whole. But instead of being afraid or disgusted by me she grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look into her eyes, and these were the words she said:

'"Remus Lupin, just look at me, you moron! You honestly think I care about you being a werewolf more than you being my friend? You remember what I'm going to say to you, 'cause I'm only gonna say this once. Never ever question your worth because of what you are. You're no less than anyone else just because you're different. If you're ever in doubt don't question what you are, question who you are. That way you can change. If you ever ask what then you're just the same as everyone else, O.K? As long as you stay Remus you'll still be my friend."

'I can't put it better to you than that. There's dark times ahead and you lot need to stick together. I hope those words serve you as well as they did me.'

Remus bent down and scratched behind the marbled rith's ears and she leaned into the gesture, closing her eyes in pleasure.

'Doesn't mean a lot to you, does it? Doesn't matter to you that those words are all that's left of one of my old friends. As long as someone feeds you and takes care of you, you don't care what happens.'

Something odd happened as he looked into Storm's eyes, a strange voice invading his mind. "Don't you believe it, mate."

He shook his head, blaming the heat and stuffiness of the classroom. 'Come on, you, we'd better check that Severus is still alive and in one piece.'

Remus watched the rith trot along the stone ways and wondered, not for the first time, if there might be more to Storm than met the eye.

It was just as well that he decided to check on Snape.

He was on 'babysitting' duty with the seventh years. They had now finished their exams and were now ready to meet the outside world head on, but while they were still at school there was still time to fit in a few last stunts. They were practically uncontrollable. But it was Lucy Seymour and the Weasley twins that irked him most.

First of all they were nowhere to be seen, but definitely heard. Then they came into sight – absolutely pissed as newts and singing very loudly, and very badly, a couple of their friends just as bad and stumbling and giggling all over the place. A bottle of clear liquid dangled from Lucy's hand.

He stormed up to them, 'What in the name of Merlin do you think you're playing at?'

He was shocked when Lucy threw her arms around him in a hug, 'Hello Severus! Fancy a drink with us?'

The Potions Master turned his head away from the alcoholic fumes emanating from her mouth, 'Lucy, are you drunk?'

She finally let him go and looked at him with what would have been righteous indignation if it weren't for the inane grin plastered across her face and glazed eyes, 'Me? Drunk? No!' It was at this point that she swayed violently and landed in a large laurel bush where she immediately gave vent to a raucous laugh. Fred and George were holding onto each other in an effort to laugh and not fall over at the same time.

Snape saw red, 'Do you really want me to give you detention in your last week?'

Lucy shielded her eyes against the sun that was now directly in them, 'Now, sir, I will not be swayed by your sweet words of temptation.'

'Never in all my years have I...'

He was stopped in mid-flow when he realised that the Weasley twins were imitating everything he said in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. Turning to glare at them, he found that they simply glared back, and, when he became tired of the charade, they started hooting and shouting 'We won!'

Lucy yawned, 'I'm sorry, sir, but the thrill is gone. Professor Lupin!'

Remus, having just arrived, became the new target for Lucy's attention. She threw her arms around his neck, 'How is our favourite Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher?'

Slightly embarrassed, Remus untangled himself from his fellow Lupuscan's embrace, 'Get off, Brack, you're ratted.'

'But you're so lovely!'

'I'll leave this bunch of inebriates in your capable hands, Remus,' Snape hissed.

Lucy once again fell on him, 'Don't go, Severus, we need you to protect us in case Remus turns wolfy on us!'

'If he does I hope he eats you first.'

Snape stalked furiously away, not realising that Fred had given him a fluffy white rabbit tail and George had put a charm on his robes so they floated like a five foot collar, revealing his new appendage for all to see.

'Done?' Harry asked.

'Just about,' Justin shut the door with some difficulty.

'You don't think this is going too far?'

'Come on, after all the grief he's put you through?'

'I s'pose. What'd he do to you anyway?'

'He tried to kill one of my friends, and I've never forgiven him for what he did to Storm that time.'

'He's coming!'

The trio – Ron, Harry and Justin – fled the scene just as Snape rounded the corner. All he wanted was to wind down after the hellish lesson he had just endured. However, it wasn't to be.

His passwords wouldn't work. No matter what he tried the door wouldn't open. He stepped backwards and something crumpled under his shoe. He picked up the ball of paper and opened it. Letters, obviously cut out from the 'Prophet' read, "Try flowers and lollipops".

With a ball of bile rising in his throat that he nearly choked on, he said the revolting sentiment. The door swung open to reveal his chambers filled from floor to ceiling with balloons and flowers, completely ruining the classy environment he was used to. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to look at it the same way again and he was going to make whoever did it pay.

'It's just high spirits, Severus. I thought you'd have come to expect it after all these years.'

'It's never been on this scale, Albus.'

'We do have the Weasley twins graduating, you know. Most of the staff are feeling it. Diana's been going around with a wolf tail the past few days, we've had wings attached to Storm and various odd transfigurations and charms flying about. You remember what it was like to be finally off. Your year was one of the worst, as I remember it.'

'Because of Black and Potter.'

'Indeed. Caught most of the seventh year skinny-dipping in the lake, as I recall, on their final evening. Half the sixth year and some of the fifth too.'

'How could I forget,' Snape snarled.

Oh yes, he remembered all right. Being grabbed by people who were still a mystery to this day and thrown into the lake, fully clothed, accompanied by loud jeers and yells of 'That ought to wash some of the grease out of his hair!' and 'Having a bath at last, Snivellus!' He remembered being ducked repeatedly, despite being a rather weak swimmer, having his clothes stripped away and finally running off in shame to cough up lungfuls of water and trying to cover his manhood as best he could.

Dumbledore remembered that rather gangly teen trying to report most of his year for that night. A half-hearted reprimand was all he could muster at the time, trying, as he was, not to laugh.

'Let them have their fun, then you'll be rid of them for good!'