Ch. Three. Schedules and Suspicions.

Disclaimer: Everything except for my OC belongs to JK Rowling... Don't kill me.

The next day Ally and Lily headed down to the common room. Remus and Peter were playing a game of chess and James and Sirius sat around talking and watching. A group of seventh year Gryffindor girls were talking loudly about what their boyfriends did over the summer, and there were two fifth years sitting on the couch.

They walked over to the couches and sat opposite the two girls.

"Ally," Lily said. "These are two of my friends Carla and Pria." She pointed to them as she said their names.

Carla looked really shy and just smiled. She had platinum blonde hair and dark brown eyes that looked a bit awkward on her. Pria had dark wavy hair and dark skin, she grinned happily at Ally.

"Hello!" Pria said rather fast, "My name is Debapria, or Pria for short. Is Ally short for Allison?"

"No, just Ally." She said back. "Debapria is a pretty name! Do people say Debra a lot?"

"Oh loads of time!" Pria exclaimed annoyed. "It's the worse! I say Debapria, they say Debra," She exaggerated with her hands. "I would say Pria, they would say Dia, I would say Deba and they would say Chia Pet!"

Carla and Pria laughed at how flabbergasted Pria looked and she continued with her rant for several more minutes.

"Uh... Guys," She interrupted "Perhaps we should go down and join the rest of the school at breakfast?"

The three other girls looked around and realized they were the only ones left in the common room.

They all rushed out of the portrait hole and Ally and Pria raced down to the great hall leaving Lily and Carla behind. By the time they reached the hall Pria and Carla had saved them two seats and were already helping themselves to breakfast.

"We saved you two seats." said Ally motioning for Lily to sit down next to her. Carla sat down next to Pria and across from Ally and Lily.

Not far into their helping themselves to breakfast Professor McGonagall walked by and handed out the schedules. When she finished Ally barely got a chance to compare her schedule with Lily's because Lily was called over to speak with McGonagall.

"What does she want do you think?"

Lily only gave her a confused look as she walked away to where McGonagall was. Before she turned her head back to the table someone sat down in Lily's now vacant seat and swiped the timetable out of her hands.

"Hey!"

"We have..." Sirius paused and looked over his schedule and hers. "Care of Magical Creatures and... Charms!"

"Well, lucky me," she snorted. "You could've asked me for the schedule, you know."

"But that would take all the fun out of holding it over your head and making you jump for it!" he grinned mischievously and held it over her head too far out of reach.

She snatched for it but she was too short.

"Don't make fun of my height!"

She snatched for it again and scowled at him.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Hmm..." She smirked and pulled out her wand. In a flash her schedule and his were in her hand. She took his in her hand, and crumpled it up. Taking his cup she placed the crumpled schedule in the pumpkin juice and added a little sugar on top.

"Juice?" she asked sweetly.

He took it and placed it aside.

"I'm sure James will be very proud of you when he learns what you did to his schedule." He smiled as he drew his schedule out of his pocket and Ally kept smiling.

"Why are you still smiling?"

"Because it confuses people?" She asked with the same grin plastered to her face. Carla and Pria were having difficulty controlling their laughter.

"Come on," Lily said from behind her as she pulled her out of the seat, "I've got something to tell you." They walked out of the hall with Lily practically dragging her.

"What is it/" Ally asked as she dragged her out of the hall.

Lily dragged out a long gold necklace she had hanging on her neck and showed her a golden disc attached to the end.

"Sooooooo..." Ally scratched her head in confusion as Lily looked at her expectantly "What is it?"

"It's a time turner! McGonagall explained it to me. You flipped the disc over how many hours you need to go back in time for." Lily looked ecstatic.

"Why?" Ally said looking silly.

"Last year when we were signing up for classes, I overloaded my schedule by one class, so I have Muggle Studies at the same time as Divination. McGonagall gave me the time turner to make it to all my classes."

"Oh yeah I forgot." Ally held up her schedule. "What classes do you have?"

They compared timetables in the hall and saw that they had all their classes together except for Lily's extra Muggle Studies.

"Come one, let's head to Potions..."

The rest of the week was uneventful. Ally and Lily got overloaded with various homework assignments and had gone to the Library to study and get a head start on their work. Later in the evening Remus and James joined them, Remus may have been intent on studying, but James had come to stare, and flirt obnoxiously with an uninterested Lily.

"How do you spell bollywood?" Ally asked "With an I or a Y?" she scribbled on her potions essay and looked over at Lily hiding behind a pile of books.

"Meh." She mumbled.

"Great words of wisdom Lils, thanks."

"It spelled with a Y." Ally looked up at Remus.

"You know," She wrote furiously on her essay as she spoke. "You don't look all that great Remus... a bit under the weather?"

It was true of course. Remus had bags under his bloodshot eyes from not sleeping, and his normally neat hair was unkempt.

"Oh—well—I've got to go soon, my mother's fallen sick and needs me at home... by tomorrow. I guess I am just rushing to get caught up with my school work."

"On just the first weekend of school?" Lily emerged from behind the pile of books and was staring at Remus suspiciously.

"Er—" he fumbled.

"Yeah, Dumbledore has it all arranged." James butt in.

"Oh." she said and returned to her books.

"Speaking of that," James pointed to his watch and nodded at Remus. "Don't you think it's time you headed up to our dorm and started to pack?"

Remus looked at James, then his watch and glanced discretely out the window.

"Er...Yeah, I should go." He packed his bags.

"I'll go with you. Bye Ally," he packed up too then smiled and waggled his eyebrows at Lily. "Good night, my love!"

"Meh."

Lily waited until they left the library and were gone for a few seconds before she slammed her book down on the table.

"Something is up!"

Ally looked at her in surprise.

"Every month Remus has the same old excuse! It's always that he has to visit his sick mother at home! It can't be that his mother is that sick. I saw her last week in Diagon Alley and she was in perfect health!"

"Do you think that he goes somewhere else?"

"I don't know where he goes! He just disappears without a trace for three or four days!"

"Potter seems to have some sort of clue about what's going on."

Lily rolled her eyes.

"Well... he is his friend, do you think he knows?"

"He might..." Ally thought for a moment. "From what you're telling me... It is really suspicious."

They picked up their books and bags and started the long walk back to the common room.

"Maybe we could trick James into telling us?"

"No," Lily said as they climbed a flight of stairs. "Even James isn't that thick."

They stopped in front of the fat lady.

"Do you remember the password?" Ally asked.

"No... Maybe—"

They didn't have to worry any longer though because the portrait door swung open. They waited for whoever it was to appear... but no one came. Lily and Ally peeked around the portrait to see if anyone was there.

"Weird... Do you think that the wind blew it open?" Said Lily.

"No way! It's the common room; Dumbledore has better security than that!"

"Oh yeah," Lily looked around for clues. "Maybe someone opened it, than realized they forgot something, turned around to get it, and left the door open."

"I guess..."

They looked at each other skeptically and climbed into the portrait hole.

"I've got it!" Lily shot out of her seat.

Madam Pince looked at her murderously and she sat back down giggling with Ally. It was the middle of their second week at Hogwarts and they had been in the Library searching for a way to figure out where Remus went every month. They had been there everyday after classes and hadn't had any luck so far.

"Listen to this..."

The Polyjuice Potion combines several rare and powerful ingredients to give the drinker the power to change into the form of another. The drinker need only add a bit of the person they are going to change into and the effect will last an hour...

"So... What does that mean?"

"We could trick James or Remus or—or—Sirius, Peter probably doesn't know anything... Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree." Lily was bouncing with excitement.

"But... What if they see us as them...?"

"What? We'll just run away... Do you think any of the professors will believe them if they say their carbon copies are running around?"

"Yeah! You're right! Everyone would think that they're just playing a prank and refuse to fall for it."

Ally and Lily looked at each other.

"Perfect." They said in unison. Slamming their books closed they began to plan.