The fatigue I felt after the last full moon of 1974 was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.
Sure, I was always tired on the days following a full moon, but this one was ridiculous.
In the morning straight after, I could barely stay awake as my dad performed his sloppy healing spells, and I ended up spending most of that day sleeping on my mum's lap like a toddler.
The fatigue lasted for days, and on the train back to Hogwarts on New Year's day, I spent almost the entire trip sleeping.
"Did I miss any important conversation topics?" I asked groggily when the train came to a stop and Sirius woke me up.
"No," said Peter, rolling his eyes. "Just Quidditch, as usual."
"Alright," I said.
"Sirius!?" came a voice. All four of us spun around to see Regulus, sprinting towards us, then throwing his arms around his older brother and placing his head in his chest.
"I… are you OK, Reg?" Sirius asked, hugging Regulus back.
"Mother… Mother said you'd be dead," Regulus said, sniffling.
"Well, here I am," said Sirius, smiling.
"I love you," said Regulus, sobbing into Sirius's chest.
"I… I love you too," said Sirius, smiling even wider.
I felt my own face break into a huge smile at the interaction, and Sirius's happiness.
"Mr. Black, did I not give you almost a month to complete this essay?"
"I'm sorry…" said Sirius. "I understand I should have done it before the break, but I didn't, and during the break… well, I wasn't really thinking about school…"
Professor McGonagall sighed. "Did you have some problems?"
Sirius bit his lip and nodded, and Professor McGonagall didn't push it.
"Alright, I'll just take ten points from Gryffindor and give you a detention for tonight, but try to complete all your homework essays to get the best result you can in the exams in June. You have your O.W.L.s next year, remember."
Sirius nodded and went back to his desk, and I stepped forward in the line and handed my essay to Professor McGonagall, then sat down in my spot. I turned around to speak to James and Peter, who sat directly behind me.
"Shit, O.W.L.s next year," I muttered.
Peter's eyes widened and James rolled his eyes.
"Mr. Lupin, face the front please," said Professor McGonagall, and I turned back around to face the blackboard, where she was writing a bunch of letters and arrows. "Alright, fourth-years, it's time we learnt about the scientific formula behind Transfiguration."
"What a load of crap," Sirius grumbled as we walked out of the Transfiguration lesson.
"Why do we need to know how it works, it works and that's all that matters!" James cried, rolling his eyes. "What even was that formula thing?"
"Intended transfiguration difficulty equals wand power times concentration divided by viciousness times mass of the beginning object, all multiplied by the unknown variable," I said. "Intended transfiguration difficulty equals wand power times concentration divided by viciousness times mass of the beginning object, all multiplied by the unknown variable… intended transfiguration difficulty equals wand power times concentration divided by violence… no, viciousness times mass of the beginning object, all multiplied by the unknown variable…"
"What the hell!?" Peter cried. "English please."
"Well, McGonagall wrote it on the board, I just I dunno… said it in my head a million times, it'll probably be in our exam," I shrugged.
"Give me your brain please," James begged. "What if we… what if we sucked your brain out of your skull, then grabbed a piece out of it and then put the rest of your brain back into you, then we all broke up that tiny piece of your brain and put a bit of it into each of our own brains?"
"Er… first of all, that'll kill me, and second of all, your brain is capable of remembering formulas, you just need to use it for that instead of memorising every inch of Lily Evans's face," I said.
"I'm not memorising every inch of Evans's face!" James cried.
"Really, because you spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at her school photos in the photo album over the break," I said, raising an eyebrow, and James's cheeks went pink. "Oh, are you blushing, James?"
"I'm not," said James, but he was smiling.
"Thoughts on 1975 so far?"
"Freezing."
"That's because it's January, Moony."
"And because we're currently lying down in the snow," I said.
"It's not that cold," said Sirius. Was he used to the cold after being left out in the cold? "You're warm, which makes it bearable."
"You're warm too," I said, smiling and closing my eyes.
"Not going to lie, though, my back is getting cold," said Sirius.
"Mine too," I laughed.
"D'you want to go to the library?" Sirius asked.
"Yeah, I need to do my History of Magic homework anyway," I said, standing up.
"You're actually going to do that? A two-foot-long essay about the founders of Hogwarts?" Sirius snorted as we walked towards the castle.
"It's really important for the exam!" I cried.
"It's Professor Binns, he doesn't care if you do your homework or not," said Sirius.
"Yeah, but I need the extra knowledge for my exam," I said as we entered the castle.
"Nerd," Sirius teased, and I just laughed.
"I need to beat Lily this year," I told him.
"Well, I'm sure you will," Sirius smiled as we got into the library. I saw Lily there, of course, but, to my surprise, she was sitting with James.
Sirius and I exchanged a look and watched the two of them. Lily had a quill in her hand and a half-written essay in front of her, but she was looking at James, who was telling her some story from his childhood.
"And I fell off," he was saying, "and even after then, I fell off so many times, and even though my parents didn't say it, I knew they thought I would never be a good Quidditch player. But they kept encouraging me because they knew I loved it. And look at me now."
"You're so full of yourself," said Lily.
"Maybe," said James. "But isn't it better for a person to be full of themself than to hate themself?"
"I guess, but as long as you're not an arrogant toerag about it, which you can be," said Lily.
"Alright, would you like me to be less of an arrogant toerag?" James offered. "What even is a toerag? Is it a piece of cloth that goes on a toe?"
Lily laughed. "No, it's just an annoying person. And, er, by the way, your friends are watching us."
"What…?" James took his eyes away from Lily for one second to spot Sirius and I, standing there watching him with no shame. He rolled his eyes, then got up and approached us. "Look, I'm all for double dates, but Lily and I aren't dating yet…"
"Er, we aren't dating either," said Sirius.
"Yeah, alright," said James. "If you two could please find your way to the other side of the library so I can have some time to actually talk to Evans that would be greatly appreciated."
Sirius and I laughed, then walked to the other part of the library, where we found Snape, watching James and Lily through a bookshelf, standing stiffly with clenched fists on either side.
"You good there, Snivellus?" Sirius asked.
Snape jumped when Sirius spoke, then spun around to look at us angrily and said, "I'm fine."
"Are you a bit jealous?" Sirius asked. "A bit jealous that Lily prefers decent people over you?"
"Shut up, Black," Snape snapped, then speed-walked out of the library.
"Thank god Lily's talking to James and not him," I muttered.
"So, over the holidays, I wrote all your names on small pieces of parchment, and we're going to pull them out of a hat, and you and the name after you, or the name before you will be Potions partners for the rest of fourth-year, and also in fifth-year. This means we're no longer going to be working with friends, because you are all getting too distracted and misbehaving, which isn't fair to the students who actually try in this class, like Miss Evans and Mr. Snape."
Sirius, James, Peter, and I all exchanged looks with each other and rolled our eyes. Professor Slughorn gave us a look, then grabbed his hat with the names in it.
"Alright… first up… Mr. Pettigrew will be partners with… Miss Evans," said Slughorn as he pulled out the first two names.
"Oh, lucky," Sirius said to Peter, "she's so good at Potions."
"Next, we have… Mr. Snape…"
"Oh, god, please no…" James begged.
"With… Mr. Avery!"
"Thank bloody god," James said, letting out a long breath.
"Next, Mr. Mulciber… with… Mr.. Lupin."
"Oh, for shit's sake…" I sighed.
"Not as bad as Snape," said James, "It'll be OK."
"Mr. Potter…"
"Oh, come on," said James, "this better not be a Slytherin…"
"With… Mr… Mr… Mr. Black," said Slughorn, and he clearly looked annoyed.
"LET'S GO!" Sirius screamed.
"THE PARCHMENT IS ON OUR SIDE!" James screamed.
"The next year and a half of Potions is going to be epic!" Sirius cried as he and James began their very long and complicated and stupid 'secret' handshake.
James and Sirius being Potions partners certainly made the class interesting. They kept adding a load of crap to their potion, which often had crazy effects like their potion exploding or completely disappearing.
The only people in the class who didn't enjoy their class disruption were Lily, Snape, and Professor Slughorn, but he didn't do anything to stop them other than giving them the occasional disapproving look.
Working with Mulciber was odd. On a good day, he'd just be quiet and let me do all the work, but often he'd ask me loads of invasive questions, mainly about my cuts and scars, which I'd brush off, but he was really pushy and it was usually hard to not slap him across the face and tell him to shut up.
Peter, however, was having a great time with Lily as his partner. Apparently, she was making Potions so easy for him, and if he didn't understand something, she'd explain it as many times and in as many ways as he needed.
"She's so nice," he said, around halfway through January.
"Ugh, I wish Lily was my partner," James complained.
Sirius let out a loud and fake and dramatic gasp. "Am I… am I not good enough for you?"
"No, you're a great partner," said James, "but you're not the one I have a massive crush on."
"You know you love me," Sirius teased.
"If you two are done flirting with each other, could we walk a little faster?" I said. "We're running late for Defence Against the Dark Arts…"
"Ugh, who cares, I hate the teacher this year," Peter complained.
"He's not that bad," I said, "he's just strict, so that's why we need to get to class on time."
"Oh, also," said Peter, "Evans told me something, and it sort of gave me an idea…"
"Yeah?" James prompted. "Any idea inspired by Evans is a good idea."
"Well, she was telling me about how she's in this other Potions class, which is for… like, all of the years, just people Slughorn picks who are good at Potions and they do really hard Potions stuff," said Peter. "And today she told me they've just finished making Polyjuice potion, and well, it gave me an idea… what if we were to take some of it, and turn into the teachers to cause chaos everywhere?"
"Peter, you're a genius!" James cried, and Peter smiled widely and his eyes widened.
"Really!?" he cried happily.
"But what about the teachers?" I asked as we walked into class and took our places.
"What about them?" asked Sirius.
"Well, we can't just be polyjuiced as, say, McGonagall, then she just sees another version of herself," I said.
"Well, what if one night at dinner only one of us is polyjuiced, as Dumbledore," said James, "and whoever it is that's polyjuiced does really stupid things, and all the other teachers get so confused, but they can't really do anything because they think it's Dumbledore."
"And the real Dumbledore?" I asked. "Where would he be?"
No one responded. This was where we were stuck in our plan. Sirius suggested we locked him up for an hour, but that seemed weird considering the fact he was in his nineties and our headmaster.
"What if one of us distracted him?" Peter suggested.
"For an hour?" said Sirius, raising an eyebrow.
"BOYS!" Professor Macmillan, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher shouted as we absent-mindedly entered the classroom, "Would you like to share your conversation with the class?"
"No," said James, and we were silent for ten minutes, until the teacher set us a task to do, and we were all talking again.
It wasn't until we were walking out of the classroom that James let out a loud gasp.
"There's… there's this woman who lives near me," he said. "Old woman, older than Dumbledore. Apparently, when Dumbledore was younger, his family lived near her, and they're apparently still in contact, so… what if we make a fake letter from her asking him to come and visit her?"
Sirius grinned. "Perfect. But we need to get his hair before he goes, remember that. One of us takes the potion… and then all hell breaks loose!"
"Peter, since it was your idea, would you like the honour of being Dumbledore?" Sirius asked.
"Oh, please, no," said Peter, shaking his head furiously.
"OK, then, Remus," said James, turning to me, "if you want to be a teacher, polyjuicing yourself to become Dumbledore could make good practice?"
"Oh, alright," I said, smiling.
"This is going to be epic!" Peter cried.
The next update will not be until Thursday, 14th of July