Chapter Nine

Several hours later, Rae sat on her bed, curtains drawn, and legs folded. Her stomach growled almost angrily at her decision to skip another meal. She pulled her wand from her sleeve and lit the tip of it.

"Lumos," she whispered.

Rae pulled up her other sleeve to see her watch. It was now a quarter past eleven. Shocked, she did the math, and realized she had been sitting there four hours.

The common room was empty at six, so she stayed there until seven doing her homework. When the rest of the house came back from dinner, she retired to her dorm. There, she did the rest of her homework. While writing a charm's essay, the door opened, and in walked four female voices chattering sleepily. Rae paused her quill, not wanting to draw attention to her bed. When the voices died down, and bed hangings were heard shutting, she continued softly as she dared.

Now, she was sure they were asleep.

Rae crept from her bed, not even opening the curtains, and tip-toed to the bed she knew to be Denise Malfoy's. At the foot stood an open trunk. She picked up the clean set of school clothes that lay across the opening, and held her wand in her teeth as she pulled a small pair of scissors from her pocket.

As she pulled the clothing tight in her hands, she located one of the main seems of the shirt. Taking her scissors up, Rae clipped the thread holding it together in several different places. Denise always wore her clothing fairly snug against her skin; now they would pull apart in no time.

Gently folding the shirt and laying it back in it's place, Rae slipped the scissors into her pocket and crawled back into her own four-poster bed.

As morning dawned for the marauders, Remus was the first to sit up. He rubbed the bite marks on his arms. They still hadn't fully healed over from a few weeks ago.

Next was Peter. He looked around groggily and rolled over; unfortunately, he was already quite as close to the edge of the bed as he could get.

The 'thump' made one of the remaining two reluctantly open his eyes.

Sirius sat up, blinking into the early morning light, and then caught sight of Peter rolled up in several blankets on the floor. It rather resembled a cocoon…. He gave a drunken sort of half giggle, trailing off in a bored voice before looking across the room towards James's bed.

Still asleep.

Sirius picked up a pillow and tossed it through the opening in the hangings. Still no movement from within.

Remus watched Sirius pick up an even larger pillow to awaken James with. The aim was so terrible that it went left and knocked into Peter, instead.

He merely grumbled something about ice cream and rolled over again, apparently not caring that he was now in the middle of the floor.

This time, Remus took pity on their shortest friend and went over to drag him from his nest, while Sirius staggered over to James, poking him in the ribs with his index finger.

Nothing.

Sirius poked him in the stomach.

James groaned softly, then rolled over to protect his sensitive abdomen.

"Prongs-" Remus began. Sirius cut him off with a shushing sound.

"I have an idea," he breathed. Remus rolled his eyes; he could already see the wheels turning in Sirius's head.

He fully opened the hangings on James's bed, and then began to back up. Once at his own bed, he took a running start towards James, lunging onto his bed, full force.

Unfortunately, he also landed on his friend.

"PADFOOT!" James's voice echoed in the dorm room before his eyes were even open.

Sirius grinned. "How'd you guess?"

James didn't answer, but shoved Sirius off of him and his bed, then stood up, grabbing a pillow as he went. WHACK! Feathers flew everywhere as Sirius received the beating of a lifetime.

A/N: Yeah... Forgive me for the wait. I kinda forgot about this place... oops. Anywho, a big thank you to Melissa for reminding me to update. I actually combined two separate chapters to make one SUPER chapter... that is still incredibly short. But it's a chapter, so you guys should be proud of me! Oh, and as for where I actually am in writing the story, I had this horrible case of Writer's Block, and I tried for at least three weeks to think of something to fill in the gap between what had already happened and what needed to happen. And about ten minutes ago, I closed that gap. I had just finished watching The Crow, and it hit me like BAM! So I started talking to myself (thank God nobody else was home) and planning the next chapter out. It was great! Yeah. Okay. I'll shut up now. Remember to review, my lovelies!