Chapter 4: Surprises

It was Halloween. All the students and teachers of Hogwarts were at the feast in the Great Hall. All but four fifth year boys. Had anyone looked out a window at about 8:30 that night, (a half hour after the feast began), they would see these boys running towards a large tree. The tree was swaying menacingly, and the closer the boys got to it, the harder its branches shook.

Anyone looking out a window would see that three of the boys were sort of pulling the fourth along. He seemed to be resisting, as if the place they were headed was the last place he wanted to be. When they were within twenty feet of the tree, one of the boys (who had noticeable messy black hair) grabbed a large branch off the ground a prodded a knot in the trunk of the tree. The tree stopped moving at once, and one by one, they disappeared into the tree.

Luckily for the boys, however, no one was looking out any window, no one saw them disappear into a tree, and barely anyone noticed there absence.

One by one the boys slipped into the gap in between the roots of the tree. But one held back.

Remus stared down in the secret passage in the Whomping Willow and shook his head. "You guys, wait. Whatever you hafta show me, well, you can show me in the castle. I spend way too much time in here as it is, and I don't want to spend more time here than I absolutely have to," he said firmly.

James' head popped out of the gap and said, "We know you don't like this place Remus. Hell, I don't know how you can handle it at all, let alone once a month, 'cause if it was me, I'd probably go insane. But this is important. You know we wouldn't bring you here if it wasn't. Anyway, you'll like what we show you, and we hafta show it to you where no one will find us."

"Why?" Remus asked.

"Because if we got caught, the three of us would be expelled and most likely arrested," Sirius replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh," Remus said lightly. He sighed. "Fine," he said as he slipped into the gap. He was starting to worry about what his friends what is friends were about to do.

The boys finally arrived at the Shrieking Shack. James spoke up.

"As you very well know, my dear Remus, your three best friends found out about your 'furry little problem' in our second year.''

Remus nodded slowly, still wondering what was going on.

Sirius spoke. ''Well, we found it extremely unfair that you got to skip school once a month and hang out in this bloody shack, while the rest of us had to stay indoors. We also felt that it was unfair because the next day we had to put up with you feeling crappy. And it's a little unfair for you, being up here all alone and being a wolf and all.''

Remus sniggered.

''We decided that we didn't want you to be alone during your time here, so we started to think of ways to keep you company," Peter said.

"That's nice of you guys, really it is, but...it's impossible for you to be with me when...well, I'm like that. I'd bite one of you guys, and I don't want that to happen," Remus replied, thoroughly confused.

"Ah, but you'll find that you're quite wrong, Remus old pal. No, we can't be with you as humans, but we can be with you. It was James who thought of it," Sirius said proudly.

"You do know that werewolves do no harm to animals, right?" James asked.

Remus nodded. A small thought popped into his head, but he squashed the moment it did. They couldn't possibly... he thought.

"So therefore," James continued, "over the past three years, we have figured out how to turn into animals." And with that, James, Sirius, and Peter all transformed.

Remus gasped. Where James had been standing now stood a magnificent stag. Sirius was now an enormous, bear-like dog. They were both big enough to hold, say a werewolf, back from hurting anyone. But Remus couldn't see Peter.

He then heard a small squeak coming from the floor. He looked down and saw that Peter was now a rat, a rat small enough to run in between the branches of the Whomping Willow and press the knot in its trunk.

Remus was stunned. He couldn't believe that his friends would do this for him. For him. No one had ever done anything this nice for him before, let alone becoming an animagus. He suddenly felt lightheaded. No more painful transformations by himself. No more long and lonely nights. He would never have to be alone in that terrible shack ever again.

After a moment, he realized that James had transformed back to his normal state again and had started to speak.

"So do you like our present?' he asked, almost anxiously.

Remus shook his head, as if to clear it and said, "Like it? Like it? Are you insane? I-you-yes! You guys are seriously the best! I mean no one would ever do something like this for me, ever! Thank you! You guys are seriously...how did you do it?"

"It was easy!" Sirius exclaimed.

"No it wasn't! I mean, I totally wanted to do it, Remus, but it was hard! I couldn't do any of it! And I got to be a rat! A rat! That's not cool! I wanted to be a big animal! And I-" Peter whined.

"SHUT UP PETER!" The others yelled, interrupting him.

Peter shut up, but he was still pouting.

James shot a look at him, and then said, "Well, me and Sirius had to help Peter a little bit, but it doesn't matter. Think of what we'll be able to do! We'll be able to explore all of the grounds! We'll know more about Hogwarts then any other kid here! We'll know more about it then-then- Dumbledore!"

"Yeah, we can be like…like marauders, only without the pillaging and the stealing!" Sirius said excitedly.

Remus was laughing. "Yeah, we'll be the Marauders!"

And that was that. They would now always be known as the Marauders.

In his excitement, Peter transformed again. Now very hyper, James, Sirius and Remus all started to laugh hysterically.

James yelled, "Hey, look at his tail! It looks like a worm!" The three boys were doubled over in hysterics. James continued. "I know! We'll call him Wormtail!"

"Hey, that's cool! I want a cool nickname too!" Sirius squealed. "We should all have cool nicknames!"

And so Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs were born.

Unbeknownst to the boys, there were four people who had noticed that they were not in the Great Hall. Lily Evans was one of them.

"Hey, where's Potter and Co.?" She asked Katherine and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth shrugged and kept eating, and Katherine smirked.

"Why? Have you got a crush on him or something?" she said.

Lily glared at her friend. "That asshole? How could you possibly think that? I mean, look what he did! He's awful! I hate him! I mean the fact that he-"

Katherine interrupted Lily's rant. "Lily, I was only joking! I know what how much you hate him! I know how he hurt you! I was there remember?"

"How- much- how- he hurt-he didn't hurt me!" Lily spluttered.

"Oh. I see," Katherine said in a 'Sure he didn't' sort of voice.

"No, he didn't, because if he did, that would mean that I liked him, and I DON'T!" Lily said furiously. "Let me make this clear once and for all. Every single one of them, be it Potter, Black, Lupin, or Pettigrew, are the most horrible scumbags ever known to man!" At this point, Elizabeth looked up from her meal with her mouth open, as if to protest, but then thought better of it, shut her mouth and kept eating. "I don't care if they evaporated into thin air one day and never came back, just as long as they don't speak to us ever again!" Lily finished. She then crossed her arms, looked away, and didn't talk to anyone for the rest of the night.

Katherine rolled her eyes and went back to her treacle tart, muttering something that sounded horribly like, "Good lord, she's insane."

Elizabeth, who had decided to stay quiet during the whole conversation sighed, put her fork and knife down, and said, "I'm tired. I'm going to bed." Lily grunted in response, and Katherine muttered, "Uh-uh." Elizabeth got up and left the Great Hall, as a tear slowly rolled down her face.

The other person who noticed the absence of the Marauders was a boy sitting at the Slytherin table. He had greasy black hair and a hook nose, and was very interested in where the boys were. One of them, Lupin, disappeared once a month or so. Sow Snape would love to catch him doing something horrible and get potter, black and their stupid friends expelled. That night, as he looked around for the missing boys, Snape made a promise to himself that he would catch the idiots, and make their lives hell.

A/N: Here you go! Please review! Thank you so much to those who did review: Kayane Joel, Sugarhighbob, Mirrorbay2000, and Saphra. Thanks!