It had been three weeks since school started, and a sort of routine had been set up. Lily was no longer cross with James and Sirius; the summer had mellowed her anger. Of course, she still wasn't speaking to them, but it wasn't so much an angry silence as an indifferent one.

She spent her time with Matilda and, when their roommate Elly wasn't busy changing the first year's hair color and making the armchairs in the common room dance, she joined them as well. The TSHSD was well forgotten, as, to Matilda's obvious relief, Lily had given up on any sort of acquaintance with James Potter aside from the occasional squabble.

Sirius spent most of the first few weeks explaining himself to Regulus while fending off and sometimes goading the Slytherins that came with him. James, Remus and Peter had learned early on to escape when they saw Regulus heading their way with that certain stubborn set to his face that was so reminiscent of Sirius himself.

These incidents gave James ample opportunity to sneak off to the Forbidden Forest for a few hours and sting. The Forest was the most convenient place for him to do so, especially after he found that all the house elves had been warned by Bibb and Tippy not to give any students billywigs. All he'd gotten out of that attempt was a sobbing house elf trying to explain to him the dangers of drug use while slamming his own head into a wall.

So the Forest not only provided him billywigs, it also offered a place that he wasn't likely to be discovered in (it being called the 'Forbidden' Forest for a reason) and somewhere to hang out while he waited for the euphoria and levitation to wear off.

Which was exactly what he was doing hanging out in the forest at dusk on the second full moon of the school year.

James knew he was supposed to be meeting Sirius and Peter in the entrance hall soon; he knew they were going to spring Moony in less than two hours. They'd being practicing the animagus transformation for years, and now they were putting it to good use. He'd be meeting them soon. He just needed to unwind a bit beforehand.

James fumbled with the mossy jar he carried around in his pocket and pulled out a few more billywigs. He had two hours, which meant that one more sting would be cutting it fine, but after three weeks James was nothing if not confident that no one would notice or question him if he showed up a bit late with an unexplainable, loopy grin and a bounce in his step.

As he shoved the extra, rather irritated billywigs back into the jar and fumbled with the lid, the jar slipped from his scrabbling grip and fell to the ground, smashing to pieces. James stared at it blankly for a moment, watching as the aggravated insects swarmed away from their once-prison and advanced on him, buzzing furiously.

James scrambled backward, grasping at thin air and nearby tree branches. "Oh. Bugger."

The hoard attacked, upward of twenty billywigs stinging him all at once, mostly around the face and neck, as he was wearing his school robes. James cried out, swatting at them, which only served to further anger the little blue demons.

After they'd all stung and tormented him for the longest few minutes of James' life, he was left hanging in the clearing, very intoxicated, mildly irritated, and beginning to rise higher in the air than usual.

James didn't notice this. Or at least he didn't notice this until a well placed branch impeded his ascent. He'd still been grumbling over the mass breakout from his little insect Azkaban. The branch plowing into his stomach, however, drove all thoughts of the possibility for miniature dementors with butterfly wings out of his mind.

James looked around, and, in his completely smashed-in-a-way-that-firewhiskey-only-dreamed-of-replicating state, very thickly and slowly came to the conclusion that he was higher up than he was meant to be. After a bit of thought, he decided triumphantly that this was because of the vicious assault of the billywigs a few minutes ago.

He was happily congratulating himself on this mental achievement when a memory penetrated his venom-induced haze.

They will rise rapidly into the air and will not return to solid ground until the head is either deflated or pops.

Deflate or pop.

James felt his head. It seemed a bit...swollen. He cautiously let go of the tree trunk and felt himself begin to rise again, as though he was filled with helium.

This was bad.

Lily was in the common room, playing a game of chess with Peter. He was well known in the house for his amazing games skills. Rumor had it that, no matter what the game, Peter would beat you at it. Lily was determined to prove that rumor false, and was single-mindedly focused on Peter's pieces as he swallowed hard and moved his bishop.

Lily crowed and captured it with a knight. Peter wasn't that good. She smiled at him sweetly and said, "Your turn, Peter!"

Peter made a face at her and glanced around hopefully before moving a pawn, which Lily promptly destroyed.

Honestly, there must have been some mistake in the rumor mill, Lily thought as she waited for Peter to make a move, watching him sweat with evident enjoyment. Everyone was always so quick to believe what others told them, but Peter was obviously only average at chess. Lily couldn't stand it when other people blindly believed what they were told. Her schoolmates had blithely believed in the Theory and Peter's abilities, and look where that had gotten them. Worried over something that was nothing at all, and giving Peter genius status when he was obviously just another player. Even her sister did it; Lily was infuriated every time she thought about Petunia and her fiancée, his stout declaration and Petunia's doting agreement that Lily was abnormal.

Peter made another substandard move and Lily pounced, destroying his defenses and declaring Check with a vicious sort of satisfaction.

James floated past the lake and toward Hogwarts, now eye level with the fourth floor. The buzz was gone, but the uncontrollable levitation was not, and James was now starting to fully understand the situation. To put it frankly, he was terrified. He couldn't think of what to do, but he knew that he had to do something, and he had to do it fast.

He needed a way to deflate his head. He wasn't even going to consider the other option.

As James floated toward Hogwarts, Gryffindor Tower caught his eye. He set out toward it, deciding that the best thing to do at the moment would be to get inside before he was higher than the Astronomy Tower and beyond helping.

By the time he reached it, he was conveniently eye level with his own room, which was fortunately one of the higher ones. He reached out, and, grasping the sill, rapped sharply on the window, unsure if he wanted someone to be inside.

Fortunately, there was someone, and even more fortunately, it was Sirius.

Sirius had been sitting on his bed, idly tinkering with the Marauder's Map when he heard something tapping at the window. He was in the middle of a very tricky spell, and didn't want to be interrupted. Owls shouldn't be flying up to the dormitories, anyway. It was probably his imagination.

He listened hopefully, and heard nothing. He grinned and started poking at the dot labeled 'Severus Snape' again, wondering if the others would agree to let him add a bit of voodoo magic to the map.

The tapping began again, louder this time.

"What is it?" Sirius demanded, finally sitting up and looking at the window, expecting an owl, or possibly a raven. What he saw made his jaw drop.

It wasn't a bird. It was James, who looked nothing like a bird, because birds didn't cling onto the sill and look as though they were falling up, if that was possible.

Also, birds had more feathers and their heads weren't swollen so that they were nearly bigger than the window. James looked panicked and was gesturing wildly with his oversized head for Sirius to let him inside.

Sirius flung open the window and hauled James inside, giving an extra tug when his head looked as though it wasn't going to cooperate. When he'd gotten James safely inside and hovering near the ceiling, Sirius sat down abruptly and stared up at him.

"What the hell happened to you?" he asked, watching James cautiously. He wondered if it was a trick of the light, or if James' head was actually slowly expanding as he looked on.

"Sirius, I need your help," James said quickly. "Do you have any idea how to deflate me?"

Sirius stared up at him incredulously. "Are you serious?" he asked. "We're going to the Hospital Wing, James."

"No! You can't take me to Madam Pomfrey!" James cried out in a panic. "She'll find out how I got this way, and I'll be expelled or something!"

"How did you get this way?" Sirius asked, shaking his head.

James turned red, and muttered, "I may have been murrphg birriwurgs…"

"What?"

"I said I may have been doing billywigs!" James said loudly.

Sirius stared. "Oh…James, you idiot."

"Sirius, my head is going to explode if we don't do something to deflate it soon!" James said, panicking. "Where's Remus? He'll know what to do!"

Sirius stared at him, then said, "He's at the Shack, James, you know that. We were going to meet him, but it looks like you've messed that plan up pretty badly."

"Oh no, the full moon…" James nearly hit himself on his overlarge head before remembering about the popping thing. "Sirius, we need to fix me."

"Alright, come down here, I've got an idea," Sirius said, reaching out for James's leg. When he'd pulled his friend down enough to grab onto the bedpost, he went over to the wall and pulled out a tack.

"Sirius…" James asked, suddenly not liking this idea at all. "What are you doing?"

"Okay, James. Here's the plan." Sirius seized hold of the collar of James' shirt and held up the pin for him to see. "Either we go to the hospital wing, or I see if I can deflate your head with a thumbtack."

"Let me go!" James struggled fruitlessly against Sirius' grip. "Sirius, you'll kill me! Are you insane?"

"Pick one, James."

"I don't want anyone to see me!"

"We'll hide you." Sirius paused thoughtfully. "We could turn you into a balloon…"

James sputtered. "I am not a balloon!"

"Well, no, not yet."

"Sirius!" James wailed. "You are not turning me into a balloon!"

"Well," Sirius asked impatiently, "What do you propose we do then?"

"We'll use my Cloak," James said after a moment's thought.

It turned out that the cloak wasn't big enough to cover James' head and the rest of his body, so they ended up compromising. James covered himself from the neck down with the cloak, and Sirius attached a string to James' head, making him look like a grotesque, Dark Arts version of a balloon that probably wouldn't have looked out of place at a birthday party for the Dark Lord.

Eventually they draped a bit of cloth over James' head, and Sirius led him carefully down the stairs, mindful of James' commentary in the background.

"Ow, ceiling… Ow, torch bracket. Ow, ceiling. OW! dammit, Sirius, you're doing this on purpose!"

"James, shut up!" Sirius whispered urgently, a small smile playing about his lips. "We're nearly downstairs!"

They actually had two more floors to go, but Sirius felt he had every right to get a bit of revenge for being looped into this mess.

James resumed his commentary in a whisper. "Ow, ceiling…ouch! Torch! Ow…Sirius, you're going to pop my head if you're not careful…"

"Shush, we're almost there…"

Lily watched Peter carefully as he considered his next move. Perhaps she had underestimated him. He'd managed to stay in the game long enough for everyone else to have gone to bed, although he had only half his pieces left.

Peter was just about to make his move when they heard a commotion from the stairs. They both looked over in time to see Sirius leading a very odd looking balloon down the stairs and whispering at it urgently. He looked up and jumped when he saw them watching him.

"Oh, hello Peter, Lily..." He forced a smile for them and made to leave.

"Sirius," Peter asked, eyeing Lily and choosing his words carefully. "What about our meeting?"

"Er, something came up, Peter…we might do it later, but right now it's going to have to wait…"

Peter looked concerned, but nodded, and Sirius turned briskly on his heel and headed toward the portrait hole.

"Sirius," Lily asked curiously. "Did your balloon just squeak?"

Sirius stopped in his tracks. The balloon squeaked again.

"No, of course it didn't," Sirius said, laughing nervously. "Are you alright, Lily?"

Lily narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Sirius balked under her gaze and she stood, stalking over to him and tugging sharply on the string. The balloon yelped, and she reached up and tugged at the material, only to gasp as it fell aside completely and revealed James' head.

It was not James's head as Lily remembered it from lunchtime. There were two big problems with this version of his head, one of those being the size, which gave James' features a distorted and almost terrifying cast, and the other being that there was no body attached to this head.

Lily screamed and backed away, shouting, "Oh my god, what did you do to him!"

James grimaced, which only served to make his face look even more horrible.

"It's okay, Lily," he said unhappily. "Calm down."

James' disembodied head telling her to calm down when it was swollen to four times its original size, attached to a string and being led around the common room by a twitchy Sirius Black did nothing to calm her nerves.

Lily sat, breathing deeply and staring accusingly at Sirius. "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing, Lily, I - "

"His head is huge!" Lily cried in horror. "And apparently that's all that's left! What did you do with his body!"

James let the Invisibility Cloak fall from his shoulders, and Lily started in surprise, then relaxed into her chair.

"Oh thank heavens," she murmured, closing her eyes in relief. "Just one of your stupid pranks. James, make your head go back to normal and come down here, you're freaking me out."

"Er…" James and Sirius looked at each other worriedly.

She opened her eyes and looked at them both suspiciously. "This isn't a prank, is it?"

"She could probably help, you know," Sirius said to James in an undertone. James nodded pitiably and waved Sirius on.

"James…is an idiot," Sirius began carefully. James made a sound of shocked dissent and Lily covered her face with her hands.

"Do I want to know?"

Sirius considered this. "No, probably not."

"Tell me."

"Alright. Well, James is, as we are all aware, an idiot. Am I right?" Sirius began again. Peter nodded, having recovered from his own private shock and settled down to hear the story. Lily nodded as well, one hand still covering her eyes, and indicated for him to get on with it. Sirius pulled on the string, eliciting another yelp from said idiot, who was looking very miffed at the presentation going on at ground level.

"James, our beloved idiot, whom we love very much and will not murder for his actions-"

"Sirius…"

"Yes, well, he was stinging earlier and he overdosed like Remus said and now he's all floaty and he's going to pop if we don't fix him soon."

Sirius said all this very fast.

Lily stood up. "James was doing billywigs?" she asked Sirius.

Sirius backed away slightly, intimidated. "He's right behind me, you know. Ask him yourself."

"James!" Lily admonished in a disappointed sort of voice. "I thought you agreed to stop!"

James flushed, which actually made him look a bit more like a balloon, and said, "Well, you didn't keep up your end of the bargain, so why should I have kept up mine?"

Lily frowned severely at him and turned to Sirius instead. "He needs to go to the hospital wing. How much longer until his head bursts?"

"How should I know?" Sirius shrugged. "He just appeared outside the window ten minutes ago. I don't even know how long he's been like that."

"Right," Lily said, pulling out her wand and tapping it against her hand as she paced. "Right."

She brandished her wand at James, who flinched predictably, and cast a Stasis Charm on his head.

"That should at least stop his head from getting any bigger," she said thoughtfully. James' face had been frozen with an almost comical expression of shock.

Sirius and Peter snickered. They could almost feel the waves of irritation pouring off of James, who was gesticulating rudely at them with his hands.

"I think what we need is a potion," Lily said thoughtfully. "The antidote to a Swelling Solution should work well enough to get his head back under control, and then we'd just need to find something to get his feet back on solid ground."

Sirius and Peter nodded, looking very solemn. James still looked shocked, understandably, but indicated his approval with a thumbs up.

Sirius snickered again. When Lily looked at him curiously, he grinned and said, "There are so many jokes I could make right now, I don't know where to begin."

Lily sighed and said, "Sirius, you're going down to the potions room and getting me either the antidote if you can find it, or the ingredients so I can brew it myself."

"Yeah, but…"

"Sirius," Lily warned.

Sirius made a discontented sound and marched toward the portrait hole. "Fine…"