I am so sorry for the horrendous delay in updating this story. I just got so involved in ARRMU and PILP, but now they're (all but) over, I can concentrate on this fic again!

            I'm probably going to be able to update more regularly, too – I am currently attending a 6th form college with 2 and a half hours of prep time every night, and I normally have only an hour or so of prep. Therefore, I can use the rest of the time to work on my fics!

            I'd like to thank starborn, The Spiffy Meeper, shadow kitty, Damia, Quen of the Gypsi's, gum-addict, Caffeine and arukara for helping me think up all the pranks in this chapter…

            And now that's out of the way, on with the fic!

Chapter 8 – Serious Revenge and Secrets Revealed

When Lily's eyesight had recovered, the whispering about her stopped. Instead, people started insulting her to her face. It wasn't just Slytherins now, Ravenclaws and even Gryffindors taunted her too. She supposed they had held off while she was blind as some warped sort of sympathy.

After two weeks of this treatment, Lily was getting more than a little annoyed. In fact, that was a severe understatement; she was ready to cut out the tongue of the next person to insult her, and roast it slowly over the common room fire. Unfortunately, the next person to insult Lily was a sixth year Slytherin named Burdock Muldoon, whose features reminded one of an overweight rhinoceros, and whose bodyweight was about twelve times that of the slight Lily. Settling for a ferocious glare rather than decapitation, Lily stormed into the Gryffindor common room in a foul mood.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate for James and Sirius that they picked that particular moment for their daily teasing, as Lily was most definitely not in a tolerant frame of mind. As the now familiar insults rang in Lily's ears, she saw red and her wrath descended upon her tormentors. She whirled around to face them, fire in her eyes and an eerie kind of energy gathering around her.

James and Sirius cowered back slightly, as did the rest of the crowd now gathering around. This was Lily as they had never seen her before; powerful, awe-inspiring, supernatural. and above all, angry. Clearly making an effort to curb her temper, her voice came out deadly quiet, dripping with so much coldness that James and Sirius clearly believed her quite capable of murdering them where they stood.

"You have no idea what I've gone through. You are the very least of my problems. However, you are one I could well do without. LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!"

Sirius, after standing gob-smacked for a few moments, recovered from the shock and, determined to show he wasn't frightened of her, said, "Yeah, whatever, Neffy."
Lily's eyes flashed, and she became, if possible, even taller. Power flickered in the air around her and her eyes were glowing orange.

"That's it, Black! Watch your back!" she hissed, before she turned and left through the portrait hole, heading for the kitchens. Remus cast a furtive glance around the shell-shocked Gryffindors before chasing after his best friend.

As Lily left the common room, everyone released the breath they had been unknowingly holding.

"Well." Sirius broke the silence, but somehow couldn't think of anything to say.

***

By late that evening, when Lily had still failed to reappear, Sirius had recovered somewhat. However, talking over what had happened with James by the common room fire, he still appeared unnerved.

"I wonder what she meant by 'watch your back'? What's she planning? Do you reckon she really would murder us all in our beds?" He waited for James to answer.
But James wasn't really listening. He was speculating about a\n earlier part of the 'conversation', if you could call it that. What had Lily said? 'You have no idea what I've gone through.' What HAD happened to Lily? Why was she covered in bandages? And what was that aura of power she had?

***

The next morning, it became only too clear what Lily meant by 'watch your back'. Sirius woke up the next morning to find himself trussed up like a turkey and hanging from the ceiling. From the sound of James's shouts and struggles, he was in the same predicament. After several minutes cursing Lily and straining futilely against the ropes, the pair managed to wake up Remus, normally a very heavy sleeper, who proceeded to break down into hysterics. After half an hour or so, he recovered enough to gasp out, "She got you good!" and went to fetch a prefect.

The boys suffered all day. Lily had put itching powder in every robe they owned, hidden half of their textbooks in bizarre places (for example, inside the suits of armour, or balanced on the gargoyles). Her 'piece de resistance' was, however, the custard she had sneaked from the kitchen and filled James and Sirius's pointed hats with. Remus, a willing accomplice, had distracted the two at a vital moment by telling them that they were late for breakfast, which was true enough as they'd been a little 'tied up', and they had jammed them on without noticing… until it was too late.

The Slytherin students were, once again, granted a reprieve, as James and Sirius devoted their time to retaliation. The singing charm at supper backfired, as Lily's soulful rendition of "All by Myself" had most of the faculty, and a significant number of students in tears, not that they'd admit it – and merited a spontaneous round of applause. Even Lily, though, couldn't fail to be affected by her school bag developing fangs and trying to chew her hand off whenever she reached in for a textbook.

The prank war escalated, and as the number of injuries to innocent bystanders increased, the student body developed a great sense of caution and an almost infallible instinct for danger. James and Sirius were at a definite advantage, as they were purebloods with far more knowledge of magic than Remus and Lily, who was unable to perform the simplest of spells. Remus tried his best, excelling himself when he transfigured the pair's shoes into lobsters, meaning that the two ended up in the hospital wing overnight as the pincer marks healed. Lily, too, was surprisingly creative, even with only Muggle methods available to her. Simple but effective, she had swapped James's and Sirius's wands for normal sticks. The two boys were baffled as to why no spell would work for them, and it took them the best part of two days to figure out what had happened.

After a couple of weeks, the prank connoisseurs among the students had identified patterns in the styles of the rivals. Sirius and James went for quantity rather than quality. They generally performed more traditional pranks, perhaps because they'd been pranking since they were so young. Typically, they would curse everything Lily and Remus tried to eat to change into flobberworms, or gave them bright orange Mohawks. They tended to act on impulse, rather than plan carefully. This had caused them much embarrassment when two spontaneous curses had hit each other and ricocheted, giving the pair bread heads for the day.

Sirius's fish fetish also emerged once again. Lily and Remus spent a day with pins, were followed around by a swarm of flying fish, and even spent several hours unable to say anything other than, "Do you have any fish?"

Lily and Remus's pranks were more carefully planned and executed. Lily, being unable to practise magic, had become very adept at Magical Theory, and had helped Remus to master complex Morphing magic. The two boys had received a dose of their own medicine, as Remus modified their taste buds so that everything they ate tasted of rotten fish. He'd also had notable success with Cross-species Changes, and had given the pair bullfrog's tongues. This had been a source of great merriment to the rest of the students – every time an insect went near them, the boy's tongues would flicker out and ensnare it. The looks on the boys' faces showed that they did NOT welcome this instinctive behaviour, or enjoy the peculiar meal.

Lily's slightly warped sense of humour meant that her pranks were far more imaginative than her enemies'. In the space of a week, Sirius and James spent time being followed around by dancing stools, attacked by lime green flamingos and had spinach hurled at them by levitating leprechauns.

At midnight on a Wednesday in November, James and Sirius were busy booby-trapping the deserted Gryffindor common room to rain snails down onto Lily and Remus (and anyone else who happened to get in the way) when they noticed the pair in question walk into the room, deep in conversation. They hastily hid the snails, anxious to avoid being discovered. When he knew that the pair hadn't noticed them, James suggested that they listen in on what the two were saying.

"After all," he reasoned, "it's probably their plan of revenge. You know what they say, forewarned is forearmed…"

But on the other side of the room, the conversation was taking a very different turn to what the boys had expected…

***

Lily sat next to the dying embers of the common room fire. Beside her, Remus was curled up, chatting with her. She smiled sleepily. She finally felt like she belonged.

It seemed that Remus was thinking along the same lines.

"Lils?" he said. "D'you remember the day we met?"

Lily rolled her eyes and answered, "of course, Rem. How could I forget?"

Ignoring her sarcasm, Remus continued seriously. "Remember that I told you I was different too?"

Lily, sobering, nodded.

"Well, you're my best friend, and I think you deserve to know why. You deserve to have a choice whether to be my friend, knowing the truth."

Lily merely nodded, recognising that this was hard for Remus, and that interrupting him would only destroy his nerve.

            "Well, the truth is… I'm a werewolf."

            Lily's shocked gasp helped to drown out the sounds of disbelief made by their two hidden spectators.

            "Oh, Rem. I'm sorry. You must've had it tough."

            "You still want to be my friend?" Remus sounded hopeful and surprised.

            "Of course! You can't get rid of me that easily. Besides, I'm hardly what you could call normal."

            "Thanks, Lils." The two friends grinned at each other, before Lily sighed and turned away.

            "Since we're doing the girly secret-sharing thing, I suppose I better tell you about these." She gestured at the bandages despondently.

            "Lils, you don't have to."

            She shushed him impatiently. "Be quiet and listen. I need to do this."

            And so she spilled out the tale of her mum's abandonment, the abuse from her father and her horrific injuries. By the end of it she was both in tears and in Remus's arms, as he rocked her gently, soothing her. The pair remained by the fire, eventually drifting off to sleep when the sobs of emotion had ebbed.

***

            James and Sirius, behind one of the sofas, stared at each other in shock, hardly believing two people of their own age could have gone through so much. Guilt began to gnaw at James's stomach for the way he had treated the pair. He wasn't sure he could cope with half the problems either had endured.

            Sirius, gobsmacked, turned to him, voicing the only coherent though in his head.

            "Oh, sweet Merlin!"