Chapter 5: The Animagus

After getting off the train, the second years and older left for the carriages. The Marauders and Lily, being some of the first few off, heard the booming voice of Hagrid calling the first years.

"Firs' years! This way firs' years!"

Hagrid was a man who was twice the height of the average man, and three times as wide. He stopped short of the front of the train, holding a huge lantern. His beady black eyes wandering the sea of students, occasionally waving his hand to students. When his eyes landed on the Marauders and Lily, his grin grew to a huge smile; the friends waved at each other.

"We should go see Hagrid tomorrow after classes finish," James said as he lead the way to an empty carriage. Upon reaching the carriages, Sirius jumped into it without a second thought. James then helped Lily into the carriage like a gentleman, followed her in, who was followed by Remus. As the carriages hold only four Pettigrew had to find another carriage to ride in.

The carriages reached the castle, students gathered outside the carriages and headed in toward the Great Hall. When the carriage with Sirius, James, Remus and Lily reached the castle, Remus and James climbed out; James helped Lily climb out and was followed by Sirius. As Pettigrew wasn't with them, the group walked up to the Great Oak doors to wait for him.

Once Pettigrew joined them, they walked into the castle. They got as far as the middle of the Entrance Hall where Peeves the Poltergeist was turning the students' hair pink. Just a few feet from Peeves was Lucius Malfoy, a seventh year boy with platinum blond hair, cold gray eyes, and with the reputation of being the meanest prefect the last two years. On his school robes was a new badge, a Head Boy badge. Peeves had been trying on Malfoy for the last ten minutes to change his hair.

James and Sirius noticed, and put in their own spells, which changed all of Malfoy's robes, hair, and skin the brightest pink anyone had ever seen.

The two Marauders looked at each other, high-fived with a huge grin on their face. Peeves, having noticed, also grinned at them for their help.

Remus and Lily just shook their head at the boys' playful antics. All the students that were walking behind Malfoy started snickering, but only when they entered the Great Hall did they full out laugh, along with the rest of the Great Hall filled with students. Even some of the teachers snickered and laughed.

Malfoy, knowing that peeves was always up to something, made sure he was protected from his pranks. When Malfoy heard the laughter, looked at himself to find all pink. The look on his was, when what he saw registered, was beyond mad. He turned around and found the Marauders looking completely innocent.

'I'll deal with them later. Then they'll think twice about humiliating me,' Malfoy thought to himself. He then turned around and continued to his spot at the Slytherin table, all the while trying to turn himself and his clothes back to normal, with no luck.

An hour later, all the students, except the first years, were seated; the first years were waiting to be sorted by the Sorting Hat. Due to the threat of Voldemort, not many parents wanted their child or children away from home, so there were only twenty-four first years.

Having sat through the sorting for four years, Lily finally allowed herself to zone out, but kept an ear tuned to the hat shouting "Gryffindor" when a student was sorted to the house. In the end, each house held six first years.

Dumbledore then stood, gave a few words and sat down. As soon as he sat, food appeared along the tables. All the students tucked into the food, most still talking, the rest enjoyed their food and listened to the conversations around them. Once everyone had their fill of food, it disappeared, only to be replaced with pudding.

Once the pudding disappeared, Dumbledore stood up again for his speech. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! First off, would the first years please note that the dark forest is forbidden to all students, for which it is named; Forbidden Forest." As he said this, his gazed landed on James and Sirius. They grinned innocently back at him, Pettigrew was completely clueless as to what was going on, and Remus and Lily grinned and just shook their heads.

"Will those two dunderheads ever learn, Remus?" Lily whispered.

"I think not," Remus replied, still grinning.

As Dumbledore wore on, most of the students began to become restless. Having noticed, Dumbledore ended his speech with a "Good night students, and rest up for classes tomorrow morning."

Lily and Remus showed the first years the way to the tower. Once inside, everyone went to bed. Lily and the Marauders, however, stayed up to talk longer. Lily and Remus put their heads together to make a notice to the tower saying a meeting was in order to discuss the values of the house, while the other Marauders, James, Sirius and Pettigrew made plans on when to pull pranks and who to pull them on.

The next morning, Lily woke up early, took a shower, dressed and went to the living room to wait for her friends while reading up on her possible animagus. An hour and a half later, they finally arrived.

"Good morning, Lily," her friends said together.

"Morning Mel, Mary. How was your holiday?" Lily replied putting her book away in her bag. They then headed off to the Great Hall for breakfast.

When the Marauders finally arrived to breakfast, Sirius sat next to Melada, a young woman of sixteen with long, dark brown hair, pale skin, and a badass personality. Pettigrew sat next to Sirius while James and Remus sat across from Lily and Mary.

Once all the students had made their way to breakfast, the head of houses set off down their respective house table to hand out schedules. After fifteen minutes, McGonagall finally reached the sixth years.

"Miss Evans, what classes would you like to take for your NEWTs?" McGonagall asked.

"Well, as I did well on my OWLs, I'll take double DA, Charms, Potions, and Transfiguration. Quick question, is it true that seventh years get to take a class of DA theory?" Lily questioned.

"Yes, that's true. Would you like to take that next year?"

Lily nodded. McGonagall then handed Lily her schedule. The Marauders also signed up for the same classes as Lily, though Remus added Astronomy.

'Sweet, first class is a break. I can continue to study my animagus,' Lily thought to herself. Upon reaching the library, she grabbed all the books she could on tigers.

"Hey Lils, what ya doing?"

Lily looked up and found Severus sitting next to her. Still unsure if she wanted to or could trust him, she pulled some of her books toward her, as if protecting them.

"Research," she replied shortly.

"On animagi, cool. What do you think you are?" he replied, ignoring her shortness with him.

"As of now, I've narrowed it down to fox, wolf, and cheetah. I just eliminated tiger. What's your class schedule?"

"Free period, Charms, Transfiguration, lunch, DADA, and free after that. You?"

"Same. Will you help me put these away so we can get to class on time?" Severus nodded and got up to help. Ten minutes later they had all the books away and were heading off to the Charms classroom. Outside the classroom, the met up with the Marauders. All the teachers gave the same lecture before class started. A review of the past years, then on to harder lessons for NEWT standard.

Finally, it was dinner time and the students were famished, having had to listen to four lectures during the day. Lily and Remus, due to knowing the importance of school, and especially passing their NEWTs, already had most of their homework done by the end of dinner, having done what they could during their free periods. When Lily finished her work a half hour after dinner, she went to the library again and gathered books involving wolves.

Three hours later, Lily found herself back in Gryffindor Tower talking with the students about what is expected of them and should do their best to follow them. McGonagall soon joined them and gave her say in everything. Once done, they all headed off to bed to rest up for classes the next day.

Ray and Jack started looking for an apartment as soon as they returned to the Lupin household from Kings Cross station.

"Jack, sit, stop pacing. The more you pace, the more annoying and nervous I get. If you sit and relax, the easier it'll be to find a place," Ray said to calm his younger sibling brother.

"You make it seem like you don't want to be here," Jack said as he sat in the chair next to Ray.

"I didn't say I didn't want to be here, I'm actually very grateful to them for taking us and Lily in. I just think we've taken enough of their space and should find our own place soon."

Lily soon found that her animagus was a cheetah, and with coaching from McGonagall, Lily was able to change into her cheetah within two months of the school year beginning.

"Hey Remus, guess what!!!? I found my animagus form! It's a cheetah!" walking up to him out by the lake. "I just finished my lesson with McGonagall on changing into my animagus. I finally got to change into her, it was really amazing!"

"Cool. Have you thought of a name for yourself as James and Sirius do like to come up with some weird names," Remus replied, marking the page in his book to give her his attention.

"No, not yet, but I'll start soon enough. I'll tell them what I am after I've come up with a good name," she said, grinning.

"Ok. If you need any help, I am more than willing to, so don't hesitate to ask," Remus said.

"Don't worry, I'll ask when I need to," Lily said as she took off her socks and shoes to dip her feet in the edge of the lake, Remus soon following suit.

Sorry for the long wait. I came down with writer's block for a while and couldn't get over it. I'll try to update soon, but no promises as writer's block is really hard to get over. Thanks for all the kind reviews, however few. Please read and review.