A/N: Hey guys! So, I'm skipping about three years and jumping into 1974, when Ayesha aka Rosebud aka Rosie and co. are in their 4th year. (and yeah I know she's changing names too much)

Please let me know what you guys think of this. I would love to hear from you and receive some feedback. (It also helps in productivity :3 ) What would you like to see happen with these characters? Do you find Ayesha as a character interesting?

On to the story :)


December 1974

"Are you gonna read that all day Rosie, or join us to make the largest exploding card stack ever?"

I sighed, putting down my book. At this rate I would never find out if Westley found Buttercup in time. "Fine, Sirius. Just don't go complaining when I want to read and you want to hold gobstones tournaments."

Sirius only shrugged as he held out a deck of cards. "It's Christmas, we meet in the New Year, might as well make the best of it!"

We were all sitting in the same compartment that I'd met James and Sirius in in our first year, which had pretty much become our standard compartment. So much had happened that I still couldn't believe that I'd known these boys, who had become so important to me. A rag-tag bundle of fourteen-year olds (I was fifteen), willing to cause trouble as long as we didn't hurt anyone and, amongst the five of us, had top scorers in each subject we took.

"We have the whole year!" Remus laughed, absently scratching on a scar on his hand.

"When's the next full moon, Remus?" I asked, adding to the stack of cards.

"Umm. After Christmas. On the 29th, I think."

Remus's condition had become well known to us by our second year, and we had welcomed him with open arms. It was quite a funny story really, involving spying with a certain Invisibility Cloak James had received that first Christmas, and also two sets of two-way mirrors. James gifted me one of them, keeping its pair close at hand when I still lived in the girls dorms. Anyway, it took a while for us to convince Remus that we would keep his secret, and no, we weren't going to report him to the Ministry or tell the whole school, and yes, we still wanted to be his friends. Once we got past Remus sulking about keeping secrets, the five of us became closer than ever.

"Will it be ready by then?" Peter asked, keeping a count on the number of cards.

"Definitely not," Remus and I said at once together, bursting out in laughter, causing the entire stack of cards to explode at once, and enveloping the compartment with smoke.

"The potion will take at least till the end February, Pete, you know that," I explained, after the coughing stopped, the smoke vanished, the prefects shooed away and the detentions received.

"And you don't want to try any of that near the parents. They'll go bonkers," Remus said.

I glanced at Sirius and James, both of who were trying to keep straight faces.

"Best to avoid the subject, yeah?" I added.

Remus nodded absently, staring at James, who, sensing the eyes on him, flicked over the new stack of cards that Sirius had started.

By the time the train pulled into King's Cross, we had a week's worth of detention waiting for us when we returned in January.

The Potter Mansion at Dover was the house closest to London. The parents (minus the Blacks) had agreed – without any prompting from our side – around second year that on the days us kids came home for the holidays, we would all congregate there for supper before leaving for our homes. So it came to no one's surprise when Mr. Potter, Mr. Lupin and Dad were the only ones waiting to greet us at the station.

"The mums are waiting back at home," Mr. P said jovially as he hugged Sirius. "No point in crowding in the car, eh?"

"What – Dad, I can carry that myself!" I exclaimed, snatching my rucksack back from him as fast as possible without jostling it too much, which caused all the adults and Remus to stare at me.

"A whole Christmas without having to look at those awful people I'm related to!" Sirius suddenly yelled, diverting attention from me and my wayward rucksack.

As soon as we entered the Potter household and hugged our mums, James and I surreptitiously exited the room while Sirius made a fairly large scene greeting Lexi, the house elf. James led me to the third floor, into his room and through that to another room.

"James, are you sure you want this so close to your room? I can take it home - "

"Mum and Dad never come in here. This is the best place for it. We could put up charms but I think that'd be more suspicious."

Satisfied, I pulled the cauldron out of my rucksack. I removed the lid, which was actually a transfigured ladle, and checked the potion. "Well, it looks okay. I'll be here to check on it every day, but you should stir it every six hours, just in case I can't make it."

"Twice clockwise, thrice anti clockwise," he replied, helping me remove the ingredients and tools onto the table. "I've got it down, Rosie. Hurry up, we should get down before Sirius has to resort to desperate measures."

"At least lock the door so no one can see it!" I protested, leaving the room and depositing my rucksack on James' chair.

"See what?" a voice behind us said quietly behind us. We froze, hoping desperately it was just the one person and not anyone else. Turning slowly, we found Remus, standing the doorway, hands crossed and looking very much like the prefect he would soon be if he kept making that face at troublemakers.

"Remus!" I said fake-pleasantly. "Have you noticed how pretty your eyes are?"

Remus wasn't buying it. He walked around us to the other room. James blocked his way, making Remus narrow his eyes.

"You brought it here, didn't you? Please tell me you aren't that stupid." James glanced at me, a guilty look passing between us. Remus' eyes widened. "Are you insane? You brought the potion here? To the home of the two most celebrated Aurors in history?"

He had a point. Brewing an illegal potion to turn into illegal Animagi so that we could illegally run around the Forbidden Forest with a secret werewolf every full moon and keep him company was dangerous enough at Hogwarts, without parental supervision. Bringing it to the Potter mansion was beyond insane, which is why when James, Sirius and I took the decision of not telling Remus about it.

"They're retired!" James protested.

"It needs constant attention, Rem!" I said, trying to make him less panicked and sending James a 'don't-go-too-far' glare. "We would have stayed at Hogwarts, you know that, but all the parents insisted we come home! What else could we have done?"

"How about not made the potion and forget about this insane idea to become Animagi in the first place?"

"You know we can't do that, Remus," James said apologetically. "And before you say anything else, might I suggest that we make a move to join the others, because Sirius has only ten minutes of material planned to keep the grownups occupied?"

We ran downstairs, Remus muttering all the way, to find Sirius singing sonnets to Mrs. Lupin. Mum gave me a questioned look but I shook my head.

Thankfully, we made it past Christmas without any of the parents realising we were brewing illegal and highly advanced potions in the back of James' room. My house being connected by the floo to the Potters, it wasn't uncommon for me to drop in a few times a day, just to make sure the potion was alright.

On the evening of the 29th, James, Sirius and I flooed over to Remus'. We spent as much of the as we could with him, trying to take his mind off of his impending transformation, before he had to leave to be locked up in the small shed behind his house. Unlike other times though, we refused to leave.

"We just want to be there for him, even if he doesn't realise it," I said, pleading with Mrs. Lupin, after Remus was safely inside the shed, knowing that if he knew we were trying this, he would protest vehemently. "We promise we won't do anything stupid."

It took another fifteen minutes, and multiple security charms on Remus' bedroom cast by Mr. Lupin, but we were finally allowed to stay. It was the first time we were so close to him on a full moon. We could hear every scream, every howl, every break of his bones. The three of us held each other the whole time, not saying a word, not even daring to breathe loudly.

It was in that position that Mr. Lupin found us in the morning, silently asking us to come out to the kitchen so that they could bring Remus up to his room.

We made our way downstairs, only to find Remus lying on the couch, hand over his eyes, snoring lightly. We ate silently in the kitchen and took our leave soon after. Mr. Lupin apparated us back to the Potter Mansion, not wanting to wake Remus by using the floo. The three of us made it up to James' room before a single word was exchanged.

"No wonder he doesn't want us near him," Sirius said quietly. "He doesn't want us hearing that."

"He goes through that every month, and he wants to spare us the pain," James laughed weakly. "Typical Remus."

"This doesn't change anything," I said. "Only makes me more determined." I got up and went to check on the potion.

Peter dropped in after a few hours, and being only slightly more cheerful than us, he convinced us to play a game of exploding snap. It took a while, but soon we were covered in soot and lying on the floor, unable to sit up straight because of all the laughing.

"You see?" Peter said after a while. "This is what Remus needs from us. Not the moping faces you were making when I got here."

"You're right, Pete," James said. "He doesn't want our pity, never has." Sirius nodded.

"He needs normal," Pete said firmly. "And you guys should know that," he said, poking me in the tummy.

I sighed, getting my head off the floor to kiss him on the cheek. "What would we do without you, Pete?"

"Die in mutual moping?" he suggested, starting an all-out tickling war, which ended only when Mrs. Potter called us down for lunch.

After eating way too much, we sat down and composed a letter to Remus, which after four hours, should have contained more than an order to get down to the Potter house when he felt up to it.

"I guess that should be enough," Sirius said, throwing down the quill and calling Hiccups.

When Remus didn't show up till after dinner, Peter made us promise to wait for him before going over to Remus's the next day, and went home. The next day, when Remus definitely should have been up and about and should have read the letter, I decided to pay him a visit and Floo'ed in alone.

He was sitting on the couch, reading. He had looked up at the sound of the floo, but quickly gone back to the book on seeing me. I could see his eyes move a little too quickly for someone reading The Princess Bride for the first time.

"What's up Rem?" I asked brightly, plopping down next to him and throwing an arm over his shoulder. He winced, and shifted.

"Bruise on shoulder," he muttered, and I quickly removed my arm.

"That doesn't explain why you're still sitting here when we asked you to come to the Potters yesterday! I can see that you've opened the letter -" I pointed at the mantelpiece, where the letter was resting, " – so what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I don't want to see you guys," his voice was inaudible but I heard him.

"And why not?"

"You know why not," he hissed, glancing up at the kitchen to see if Mrs. L had come in. "I knew this would happen when you first found out! You'd try to sneak out and see me – you'll get hurt!"

"This is so not the place for this conversation," I hissed back. "Just – come with me, we'll sort it out together!"

"This is exactly the sort of thing I don't want happening! You -"

"Ayesha, honey, I didn't know you were coming over!" Remus's mother ducked in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Hey Mrs. L! I just dropped by to see if Rez would join us for a while." My voice was unnaturally bright.

"Of course! Remus, just be careful and don't go running about," she said.

"Oh don't worry, Mrs. L, we know exactly how much he can take the day after," I laughed, simultaneously pulling Remus off the couch. "He'll be back in the evening!" I added for good measure; Remus would now have to spend the entire day with us to avoid getting ourselves on the parents' radar.

He was quietly seething about that fact all the way to James's room – where we found Peter sitting on Sirius's stomach and happily munching on several sugar quills while James was dancing around Sirius's head, wearing a pair of his boxers on his head.

"A little help?" Sirius called. I raised an eyebrow at Remus, who just sighed and proceeded to get Peter off Sirius.

"Okay," I announced, after things had gone back to semi-normal – James still had boxers on his head – "Coming to the topic of the moment – Rez is angry with us for spending the night at his place."

"But I thought we could spend time at whosever place we wanted," Sirius said, in a puzzled tone. It had just a smidge too much innocence.

"Don't act all naïve, Sirius," Remus fumed. "You know why I didn't want you there. This was exactly the thing I was scared of when you first found out about my condition. I knew you'd sneak away to try to see me. And just because you were safe this one time, doesn't mean you'll always be. I could have killed you!"

"How? We were locked in your room!" James protested.

"Don't think for a second that I'll believe you three weren't capable of removing the charms Dad set."

"We didn't have our wands, Rez," I said quietly. Remus turned to me with incredulous eyes.

"We didn't. Mr. L took them away from us. Even if there was an emergency, he'd have to come and unlock us."

"And," Sirius added when Remus seemed unable to speak, "we didn't want to. That wasn't the point of us staying. We wanted to be there for moral support, y'know. Since the potion obviously isn't going to be ready for a while."

Remus looked at his feet. "So…" he mumbled. He looked close to tears. "You just wanted to be there for me?"

"Yes, you goof," I poked him in the ribs. "Why do you think we're brewing illegal potions in James's walk-in closet?"

"It's not a walk-in closet!" James protested over whatever Remus was going to say. "It's a – a game room!"

"Oh, yeah," I said, in the most sarcastic tone I could muster, "and where exactly are the games?"

This caused James to pounce on me, and I somehow found a pair of boxers in my face.


Sirius Black

Once Remus managed to pull James's boxers out of the equation, Rosie had finally calmed down enough to let go of James's hair and Peter got off my back – why that kid wanted to sit on me so much today, I don't know – so that I could return James's glasses.

"I need to go stir the potion," Rosie said haughtily, throwing a disgusted glance at the offending boxers and went into the aforementioned walk-in closet.

No, James, whatever you decide to call it, and however you use it, it's still a walk-in closet. It shouldn't matter that you have a whole other room where you dump your clothes.

"Get rid of the boxers," Peter suggested, "Or she's going to be in that mood all day." James threw the boxers under his bed.

"For your sake, I hope they were clean, James." Remus shook his head. James opened his mouth. "No, don't tell me. I want to be able to claim plausible deniability."

"Rosie shouldn't be so serious all the time. It's my job to be Sirius," I winked. There were four groans of frustration, as Rosie walked out of the closet.

"You hate that more than us, Sirius. Don't stoop to that level," Remus muttered.

Fully satisfied that Remus had moved on from the whole 'you-stayed-on-full-moon-and-I-didn't-like it' thing, I just smirked.

Rosie chose to sit on the floor and lean on my legs, so, naturally, I started shaking my leg to an imaginary beat. She threw her head back and glared at me. Shit, now I needed to sing, and quick –

Ooka chaka ooka ooka ooka chaka –

Thankfully, James joined me.

I can't stop this feeling, deep inside of me –

Yes! Rosie's head was bopping along! I could always count on my magical voice and this amazing song to distract her!

I, I'm hooked on a feeling, I'm high on believing, that you're in love with me –

James had pulled Remus up to dance a waltz, and Remus had stepped on Peter's last Drooble's gum, so now he was running for his life, with Rosie yelling the lyrics to the song.

Lips as sweet as candy, it stays on my mind –

Remus was now flat on James's bed, breathing heavily, too tired to run from Peter anymore, so Pete just sat on him.

"What's your fascination with sitting on people today?" Rosie laughed, trying to tickle him off of Remus.

"People shouldn't destroy my candy. You could eat it, but don't step on it or use it to clean your pits." He threw an overly irritated glare at me.

Oh, right. The sugar quills. That's why he sat on me.

"Get off of Moony, Pete, he's gonna deflate otherwise," I shooed him off.

Remus lifted his head to look at me. "Who in the name of Merlin's pointy hat is Moony?"

"You are," I crashed on to the bed next to him. "I have decided to call you Moony. It's a reference to your furry little problem, without actually referencing it. No one would actually understand what we're talking about. And it makes you sound like you whine a lot, which you do."

"I like it," James declared, falling on Remus's other side. "It's now your official Marauder nickname."

"Do I get a say in this?" Remus asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Nope," James and I chorused. Rosie jumped on the bed, landing half on my chest.

"So do all of us get names, or is it just Moony?"

"We should," I said seriously. "And they should make references to our Animagus forms! And I should choose them all since I came up with the awesome name that is Moony."

"You don't know your forms for certain yet." Remus was trying to pull his leg out from under Peter, who was sitting at the foot of the bed. Pete gave up and snuggled in between Remus and James.

"That's what the first potion was for! We know our forms are going to be close to the illusions from the lacewing flies draft!"

"So, I'm going to be a rat for sure then?"

"Yep. You're a chubby little grey rat. And you have a really long tail." I put my mind to it. Think.

"Wormtail," Rosie clicked her fingers.

"Wormtail?" James raised his eyebrows. He'd been trying the one eyebrow thing like Remus and Rosie, but it just wouldn't happen.

"Yeah. Because his tail is like a worm." She sat up to look at Pete. "You like?"

"I like," Pete said decidedly.

"Oh, he gets a say in his name," Remus muttered.

"Do me!" James sat up excitedly. "And no reindeer references! I'm a stag!"

"How exactly do you know it's a stag and not a reindeer?" Rosie asked with an eyebrow raised. See, James, that's how you do it.

"Reindeer aren't red," James brushed off, "and the antlers are different."

"He's done his research," Rosie laughed. "I did think your antlers were enormous though."

"Prongs?" I suggested. "Just because James's ego is tied to those antlers."

"I was thinking Forks, but Prongs sounds better," Rosie said, ducking out of the way as James threw a pillow at me.

"Prongs is good," Remus declared, probably trying to stop the pillow fight which was bound to happen. "That's three names done."

"Now what could we name a big shaggy black dog, which doesn't really say 'dog'?" James put his finger on his chin, stroking an imaginary beard.

"Snuffles!" Rosie declared. "End of discussion! Snuffles it is!"

"Nooooooooo," I whined. "Snuffles sounds like you've named a Pomeranian or a Poodle! I – am – not – an – adorable – tiny – little – puppy!"

"You did have huge feet," Pete reasoned. Rosie pouted.

"Snuffles is cute!" she flicked her curls at me.

"That's exactly why I don't want Snuffles!"

"Padfoot," Remus said. We turned to him. "For your feet."

"I still say that when he turns, there's going to be a tiny Pomeranian and we're just going to have to change his name again!"

"I hope not," Remus said, quite serious. "James and you can't quite control me on your own. Three is better than two."

Rosie glanced at me before reaching for Remus's hand and patting it. "Relax, Moony, we'll be fine, no matter how tiny Padfoot turns out to be." Remus mustered a smile for her.

"I'm not going to be tiny, but whatever," I rolled my eyes.

"That just leaves Rosie."

Rosie was a tricky one. Hers was the first form we saw, and we hadn't really expected the size of the illusion. She took up the entirety of Peter's bed, a great big black panther, with large paws, beautiful big green eyes and a head the size of two quaffles. We did our research and found out that she was actually a leopard, with a case of melanism that made her jet black. It was ironic, really, because Rosie was a rainbow on normal days.

"We could just call her Rainbow like I suggested all those years back."

"No!" she poked me in the ribs, hard enough to push me off the bed. "My form is all black, how are you getting away with Rainbow, a word which epitomises all the colours in the world?" I jumped to my feet.

"Because it's ironic! Your whole form is ironic! You are a walking talking rainbow, exhibit A," I pointed at her presently yellow hair. She turned it black in an instant, sending a glare at her fringe. "My point, your honour," I said, bowing to Remus, "she changes colours the second she's annoyed with the present colour. Exhibit B, her hair is already purple."

"Argh!" she flopped back into the pillows. "I hate Rainbow. I'd finally started accepting that you guys were calling me Rosebud when you changed it to Rosie. The whole school thinks my name is Rosie now, and I like it. Rosie is good. Rosie, I can work with. NO RAINBOW."

"Maybe something else," Remus suggested, trying to pull her back into a sitting position. "The other names are rooted in appearances, how about we try something different with you?"

"She sure made a lot of purring noises."

"Cats do purr a lot," James agreed with Pete.

"I'm not a cat! I'm a leopard, which just happens to be the fastest animal on land. You better watch out for me if you keep calling me a cat, you little deer."

"And I'm not a deer!" James protested. "You should watch out for me, or I could – I could -"

"You could what? Stab me with you antlers?" Rosie suggested.

"Moving on," I said, sitting on James's hand to stop him. He quickly pulled it out. "Something with purrs?"

"Purry? Like Furry with a P?" Pete suggested.

"That sounds ridiculous," James said. "How about Pearl?"

"Like an oyster pearl?" Rosie raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, but only we'll know it actually means your purrs. It's the perfect cover!"

"You know, that makes no sense," Remus said to James, and then turned to Rosie. "Which is why it's the best!"

"You guys make no sense," Rosie countered. And then sighed. "I guess that's why I like you."