Of Secrets and Stags

"Lily, the fox stalks the chickens," Alice whispered to Lily in the middle of working on a potion during their Double Potions.

"What?" Lily hissed as she added the powdered Mandrake Root.

"… The Marauders will replace me with Peter soon?" Alice muttered after shrugging.

"Oh. We need a signal so that I can tell it's actually you and not him, by the way," Lily said serenely as she stirred the potion twice counterclockwise and three times clockwise.

"How about… When I come up to you, I'll pull my ear. When you come up to me, you'll pull your ear and I'll nod twice," Alice offered.

"Good idea. And no fighting whatsoever when they try getting a hold of you. You just might end up fighting, or scaring, them off," Lily said with a wink. Though few people knew this, Alice was at the Marauders' level of spell casting and fighting. She could most definitely hold her own when it came to getting into a duel with any of them, even the "master" of DADA, James Potter. However, she hadn't ever had to fight any of them, so their DADA teacher, Lily, Alice, and Dumbledore where the only ones that knew it. Everyone else thought that Alice was somewhere between decent and just above average.

"So, that's it, then," Lily said with a small, firm nod.

----

"The potion is completed, and I have Alice's hair added," Remus said with a serious look on his face as the boys gathered around him on his bed.

"Right," James and Sirius said firmly.

"We have already decided when we're going to ambush and make the switch," Remus continued.

"Right," came James and Sirius once again.

"We attack tomorrow, after Alice leaves early from dinner to turn in her Library book," Remus added.

"Right," James and Sirius repeated.

"So, that's it, then," Remus said with a proud smirk.

----

Alice sat beside Lily, who was indulged in a book, on the Common Room couch. She pulled her ear quickly before sighing and saying, "Come on, we should get going to dinner."

"You still going to the Library?" Lily asked with her eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, unlike Ms. Charm-Genius, I'm stuck studying our last lesson before the one next week," Alice said with a mock-glare.

Lily laughed and shook her head. "I could tutor you, you know," Lily said with a laugh.

"No, thanks. You don't accept my offers of tutoring you in DADA, so I won't accept yours. Besides, we're both too proud to allow anyone, even our best friends, to tutor us."

Lily laughed and replied, "Too true, sadly."

"Okay, let's go!" Alice yelled, a little too loudly for comfort in the Common Room.

"… Right…" Lily said, a little embarresed at everyone's eyes being on her.

----

Dinner went by a little too quickly for Remus and Peter, but not quickly enough for James and Sirius. They were actually exited about having to capture and knock Alice out, as strange as that sounded. Peter and Remus, however, were dreading it. Remus would soon find out just how much they knew, and if they knew anything about his lycanthropy at all. Peter had to pretend to be a girl, period.

They waited behind the wall that led to the Library. "Her arms are full of books… We don't have to worry about her using her wand. Easy job, in and out," Sirius whispered to James.

"You make it sound like we're going to murder her…" James muttered with a laugh.

"Let's go!" Sirius whispered when Alice was just ten feet away from the spot they were standing at.

"Potter, Black!" Alice cried out in mock-surprise. In fact, she had been expecting them to come at any time, so she was always on guard.

"Sorry," James whispered before stunning her.

"Remus, mission accomplished," Sirius told the mirror he was holding.

"Good. Peter will take the potion in thirty minutes' time. That way Lily will believe that it's Alice, and not an imposter," Remus said with a nod.

"Wow, you think about everything, huh, Moony?" Sirius asked with a small smirk.

"Well, that's… Anyways, I've uh, got to check on this… thing," Remus said, completely flustered before putting the mirror up.

Sirius sighed and shook his head. "Still not used to compliments, eh, Moony?"

James chuckled to himself as he levitated Alice's body and hid her in the small closet that he and Sirius had decided upon. Sirius casted the charm to hide the door, which probably didn't matter, since the closet was (conveniently) unused.

"Alright, now let's go to the Common Room and enjoy the show," James said with a smirk, motioning Sirius to come along.

----

"Alright, Alice, just go in there and start talking to Lily about the next plan of action. Ask her what she thinks that "we" should do next and ask her to review the information with you to help come up with the next best plan of attack," Remus said seriously. "Alice" nodded and walked over to her friend, immediately plopping herself down.

"Hey, Lily!" she said excitedly, causing Lily to immediately look up from her book.

"Hey, Alice. You're in a good mood. How did Mission Return go?" Lily asked, pretending that nothing was strange or weird about her friend. However, once she plopped down, she immediately noticed a few things were wrong. 1) She was too energetic after studying. 2) She only took 30 minutes to study, when it normally took her an hour and thirty minutes to study. 3) She didn't say anything about actually studying. 4) She didn't use the signal.

"Oh, fine. The Librarian kept glaring at me, though. I think getting that stain on the book has her mad still…" Alice muttered with a chuckle.

5) Peter was the one who got the stain on the book.

Lily laughed along with her, hoping Peter wouldn't notice the mistake "she" made. "Oh, and speaking of missions, what's the next plan against the Marauders? We still need to confirm our theory…" Alice muttered thoughtfully.

"Not sure… We ought to go over the information we have so far, though," Lily said with a nod.

"Right!" Alice said, a little too enthusiastically. 'He's laying it on thick…' Lily thought in annoyance.

Lily pulled out a piece of paper that she and Alice referred to as the false information. "Okay… So far this is what we have… James saw the werewolf from the Common Room and rushed to force him back into the Forest. The other Marauders weren't involved in any way," Lily said with a nod. "The stag was something James controlled, like a puppet or something."

"Hmm… I guess we can see how good James is at that kind of stuff, but otherwise, I have no clue how to work with that anymore. Maybe we should just put this all behind us…" Alice muttered.

Lily looked over the note and sighed. "You know what? You're right. This… This is irrelevant to the important things coming up. I mean, we've got N.E.W.T.S. this year, and we're not nearly prepared!" Lily exclaimed.

Alice nodded. "It's getting late… We ought to go to bed," she finished abruptly, having noticed that her time was running short.

Lily yawned and nodded. "Good night…" she muttered before making her way up the stairs. She smirked devilishly before turning back to Alice, who hadn't followed, and asked, "You coming?"

Alice paused and stammered. "U-u-uh, no! I'm… saying goodnight to Frank!" she exclaimed.

"Don't be there all night, or people will start "rumors" about it…" Lily called back down with a slight wave of the hand and continued up the stairs.

Peter sighed and raced out of the Common Room, when he was sure that Lily wasn't looking.

Once he was outside the Common Room, he grabbed his mirror and said, "Remus, has she been Obliviated yet?"

"Yes, Peter, she has. James and Sirius are escorting her up there now," Remus said.

"You couldn't tell me why?"

"Because I wanted to see if you were actually paying attention to the time or not. Bye!"

"Peter…" came Sirius' voice from the mirror just as Remus left it.

"Yes?" Peter asked.

"Status?"

"Straight."

"… Not sexuality status, status with Lily and Alice!"

"Acquaintances."

"… What do they think is going on?"

"Oh, that. That's alright, too," Peter said with a laugh.

"Very, very funny, you idiot…" Sirius muttered before leaving the mirror just as abruptly as Remus had. Peter rushed into the bathroom in order to change back, and, to the Marauders, all was right with the world… Or so they believed.

A/N: Took a while, and was rather boring. –sigh- Sorry! TT