The boys laughed through the day, excelling visibly at all classes, and relishing in the attention earned by Remus. Even Remus seemed to be enjoying the attention in good humor, appreciating the spell work and the all around comedy of his predicament.
However, nothing at all would prepare the boys for the jubilation that was Professor McGonagall's face at the sight of Remus' new look.
"Wha-! Black! Potter! Lupin! What is this? Is that even you, Lupin?" Professor McGonagall nearly stuttered in shock. Remus grinned cheekily.
"Aye, professor. That I am, that I am." The boys walked past, sitting in the front row of desks, leaving the professor gawking in awe and confusion.
The boys spent a good lesson, trying to change their desks to various things, though McGonagall of course set some guidelines. The transfiguration had to be the size of the desk or larger, and could not be made of wood. She even went so far as to make it a competition of some sorts, and would be judging the best transfiguration at the end.
The trio laughed and teased as each transfigured their desks into various things, trying to decide which they would use to show off. They took great and obvious pleasure at the frequent looks of disbelief thrown at them from McGonagall. And the day seemed to be getting better and better, none of the teachers seemed to have even thought of giving them detention, all seemed preoccupied by the fact that Remus was now a mythical creature.
Sirius, of course, had to cause the first action of extreme chaos that day. He had decided to try transfiguring his desk into an extremely large potion's cauldron. However, he happened to be laughing very hard during the attempt, causing an odd lapse in pronunciation. With a bang, his desk promptly turned into a gigantic pile of amazingly oversized, green salamanders.
"Ew!" a girl from Slytherin cried, "It looks like a pile of slime!"
"Or snakes." Another Slytherin boy observed, stepping closer.
"You're all wrong," Sirius said calmly, "It looks like Snivellus' hair." James sniggered.
From the back of the class a voice shouted, "Reptile Infestation! Reptile Infestation!" As if this was some sort of secret signal and the strange reptiles were part of some demonic cult, the salamanders suddenly slithered everywhere. With an unexpected quickness for such lumbering beasts, the salamanders all managed to escape the room and were now loose among the castle. Of course, McGonagall immediately turned on Sirius.
"Black! What on Earth do you think you were doing?"
"It was only an accident, ma'am. You can hardly blame me for that, and I promise you, Professor, it will never happen again."
"Accident!" Professor McGonagall's nose flared," And I suppose it's an accident the Lupin's a LEPRECHAUN!" She screeched the last word, pointing a shaking finger furiously at Remus who admittedly shrank back subtly. Sirius stared, mouth agape.
"How'd you know it was me?"
"That doesn't matter! Detention! For all of you!"
"All of us!" James jumped in.
"Yes, all of you! Even if Black here did the actual action, I'm sure the two of you were involved just as much. I'll be in touch with you about the time and location of your separate detentions." The boys left hurriedly. As soon as they were out of earshot, they started laughing.
"The look on her face!" Sirius exclaimed, pure glee lighting up his features. Suddenly, Remus stopped walking.
"Where be Wormtail?" Remus squeaked. The three looked at each other, then, without a word, they rushed to the common room.
Lily walked into the common room with the rest of the Gryffindor girls in her year. She heard a rather lot of giggling from the front of the group and worked her way forward to see what the fuss was about. She hardly had to ask, however, for the cause was extraordinarily obvious. The group of girls had paused to stare at an oddly decorated lump.
I front of her, Lily couldn't help but immediately recognize a sleeping Peter Pettigrew. However, it was Peter as she had never seen him before.
When the three Marauders walked in, they were greeted by a crowd of people who, for once, had their backs turned and were gathered around something other than the famous (or infamous) trio. The group worked their way up to the front of the crowd and stopped abruptly, shocked, at the sight that greeted them. There, on the couch lay Peter whose head had been half covered in what was unmistakably shamrocks and small yellow flowers in place of his hair. Upon closer observation, they also discovered that half of Peter's eyebrow (on the same side of his head as the shamrocks) was now colored a rather fetching green. Peter himself, of course, remained sleeping, blissfully unaware of the crowd gathering around him.
The stunned silence and whispers throughout the common room, however, were pierced by a sharp –pop-. James and Sirius looked around to see that Remus had changed back and was looking rather happy at the improvement as well as the switch of attention from him to the oblivious Peter.
"Well, look at that!" Sirius exclaimed as they walked up to the common room to gather their books for the upcoming classes (they had decided to leave poor Peter behind), "It does wear off after all!"
"Luck of the Irish, eh Remus?" James teased, grinning broadly.
Remus stared at him for a moment, blinking in surprise, "I'm... not Irish."