"OW! You stepped on my foot," whispered Peter.
"You shouldn't have been so close then," hissed Sirius.
"Like I can help that right now," Peter snapped back at him.
"Guys, shut up," said James. "Do you want to get caught?"
"Not particularly," muttered Peter.
"Good. Because we're nearly there now," said James, leading the group to the rope that separated the regular part of the library from the Restricted Section.
"Okay, so how do we get through?" asked Sirius.
"The rope's charmed, apparently," said James. "If a student touches it, the rope retaliates by tying them up until a teacher comes to untie them. So, as long as we don't touch it…"
"Wingardium Levo…" started Peter, before James stopped him.
"Touching it includes magically," said James. "So…" James got out from under his Invisibility Cloak, and got down on the floor, carefully crawling under the rope.
"Really?" asked Peter, as Sirius followed James in the same way. Peter sighed, before following them. "That seemed too easy."
"That's because it's not the only line of defence in here," said James. "Do you have any idea how many of these books have some kind of jinx or curse to alert someone we're here right now?"
"Then why are we risking this?" asked Peter. "Couldn't we wait for daylight, and ask for…"
"NO!" cried Sirius, covering his mouth when he realised how loud he'd been. When no-one came, he continued in a quieter voice. "What would we tell Madam Pince if we told her we needed a book like this? She'd get very suspicious, probably tell McGonagall. We need to keep this VERY quiet."
"Which is why you need to be as quiet as possible when we do this," said James. "Right now, Remus is out there as a monster, and as his friends we're gonna support him in a way only we can."
"You know we could just support him the old-fashioned way," said Peter. "You know, morally."
"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" asked Sirius. "Granted, this way's a little more illegal…"
"LITTLE?!" cried Peter, before he himself covered his mouth because of the noise he made.
"I knew I should have come by myself," muttered James. "Okay guys, split up. If you find a book that looks promising, don't open it, just bring it back here, and we'll open them together. Hopefully we find one that isn't going to set off an alarm."
"And if we do?" asked Peter.
"Blame you like we always do," said Sirius, shrugging his shoulders.
"HEY!" cried Peter again, watching as his friends set off to look for some books that could help them. He sighed, and went off to see what he could find.
James was quietly reading the titles of some of the books to himself. "Let's see…'Playing with Polyjuice'…maybe some other time. 'Technically Legal Quidditch Moves'…interesting. 'Dark Arts and Where to Find Them'…I don't think Newt Scamander would approve of this book. Ah, here we go: 'The Secret of Animagi'." James carefully got the book off the shelf and headed back to the entrance…
…and saw Mrs. Lewis staring at him from just outside. She meowed loudly, to make it quite clear she had seen him. 'Damn it,' James thought, picking up his invisibility cloak.
"Is someone there Mrs. Lewis?" came Filch's voice from nearby.
'Double damn it,' thought James, racing back into the Restricted Section. He had to find the others quickly, to make sure they knew Filch was here.
It wasn't long until James ran into Peter. "Was that…" started Peter.
"Yep, Filch is here," said James. "We need to find Sirius. I found a book, but…" Suddenly, the two of them heard a loud crash, just outside the Restricted Section. "Oh no…" James and Peter dashed forward to the front of the Restricted Section, hiding behind a bookshelf. There they saw Filch dragging Sirius behind him by his ear. Sirius himself was tied up in the Restricted Section's rope.
"You thought you could sneak in here and get away with it, eh?" asked Filch, trying to subdue the struggling Sirius.
"Done it before," said Sirius.
"Well, you're dumber than I thought," said Filch, dragging him towards the library doors. "Let's see what Professor McGonagall has to say about this. Come on, Mrs. Lewis." The cat looked on into the Restricted Section for a couple more seconds, before following her master.
Sirius, however, noticed his friends still hiding among the shelves, and winked as he went past. "He did that on purpose," whispered Peter. "He knew Filch would find us, and let himself be caught so we could keep looking."
"Well, let's not waste this then," said James. "Get ready to write down how to do this."
"Right," said Peter, pulling out a piece of parchment, a quill, and an inkbottle as James opened the book. "What do we need to do?"
"Okay…looks like there's a potion we need to brew. We can probably do that in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. No-one goes in there apparently. We also need to hold a mandrake leaf in our mouth for a month…wow, that's gonna be difficult to hide. The other ingredients won't be too hard to get. And we need to leave it in a dark place until a lightning storm."
"This is getting complicated," said Peter.
"Hey, we knew it wasn't going to be easy," said James, closing the book as Peter finished writing everything down. "Now, I'll go put this back, and we can go back to bed."