Sorry this took so long. SAT's, AP's, and projects, oh my!

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Chapter Four: Exploding Potions and Spontaneous Lies

I was out on the Quidditch pitch one morning looking around. I had seen my first game the night before and was really excited to get in the air. I had been so hyper the night before, jumping up and down and babbling about the game, that James had laughingly agreed to teach me how to fly. He was supposed to be out here already, but instead a sputtering, red faced Peter came jogging up to me.

"J-James and R-Remus w-wanted me to-" he cut off, laughing, and gestured for me to follow him. He took me to the same secret passage way where Harry left his cloak in the book, said the password, and led me inside. There were three girls wearing misshapen clothes standing directly inside, arguing. They looked vaguely familiar.

"You brought Emily?" one of them groaned.

"Who else would have helped?" another argued reasonably.

"Sorry," I interrupted, confused, "helped with what, exactly?" All of them stared at me. Apparently, it was obvious. It was then that I noticed why they looked so familiar. Oh my god! I burst out laughing.

"What did you do?" I giggled. They all grimaced.

"We made the mistake of letting Remus try a potion." Sirius said bitterly. That's right. The three girls were Sirius, Remus, and James.

"It exploded." James added.

"Violently." Sirius put in.

"You have to go to Dumbledore." I told them, but they just sighed.

"We did," Remus explained, "but the antidote takes a month. Professor Slughorn is going to make it for us because it's a very difficult potion. He has no idea how I managed to mess up my potion so badly I made a more difficult potion than I was making in the first place, but apparently it's possible. Professor Dumbledore says we need to act like exchange students until Professor Slughorn fixes us, but we don't know how to act like girls."

"And I'm supposed to help?" I was already notorious for dressing, acting, and eating like one of the guys.

"I don't know! We have nowhere else to turn." moaned James piteously. Hmmm.

"Stay here and I'll be right back!" I told them. Twenty minutes later I reentered the passageway with Lily in tow. James cursed and everyone else chuckled. Well, everyone except for Lily, who was laughing so hard her face had turned bright red.

"It isn't funny!" Sirius whined, but that only made her laugh harder. She couldn't even breathe for what seemed like twenty minutes.

"Come on Lily, we really need your help here." I told her once she finally calmed down.

"Well, alright, but only because I want to know what happens." She conceded, magically turning the room into a changing room. This was about the time that Peter, able to do nothing else and unwilling to watch what he called a "girly little make-over", fled the room.

We went to work transforming them into real girls. We decided to start with James, since it would be the most fun. We gave him a reasonable, patterned blue skirt and long sleeved white shirt. We brushed out his hair, which was identical to his normal hair except down to his waist, and tied back the top into a half ponytail. Lily wanted to put him in heels, but we felt that might give us away because when James tried walking in them, he fell flat on his face. We decided on sneakers instead.

Next we turned to Sirius. He had a pretty impressive figure. Apparently he would have kept his amazing metabolism as a girl, because he was just as skinny as always, but now with generous curves. He would be wearing a purple sun dress, which looked pretty good on him. He couldn't really walk in heels either so we gave him sandals to wear. His hair was much shorter than the others, about an inch below his shoulder blade, and he made a pretty girl, once we tied it into a high ponytail.

Then we changed Remus. As a girl, he was tall and thin, but not disgustingly so. We gave him short shorts and a dark red, tight sleeved top. It clung to him appropriately and accentuated the few curves he had. It really did look good on him. He also got sneakers, because Lily had given up on the heels. Finally, we brushed back his hair, which was almost as long as James' was, and braided it down his back.

We gave all three earrings, though only Sirius got a necklace, and Remus got the only bracelet. As we worked, we showed them how to stand, how to walk, and how to talk. The walking was particularly fun because Lily and I made them practice with books on their heads at first, just for laughs. We had to stop when Sirius got frustrated and through the book at a mirror. After that, we stuck to just walking around in circles.

When we were finally done, Sirius took one look in the mirror and blurted out, "Wow! We're HOT!" needless to say Lily and I were unable to speak for a few minutes.

Once we calmed down we led them up through the common room and into the dorm. The way they looked around you'd think they'd never seen a dorm before. They looked through everything that we'd let them touch. For whatever reason, it seemed to all be strange to them. We settled them in and everything was going fine until the other girls walked in.

"What, more new kids? Is your country that horrible?" Umbridge asked scathingly.

"Well," I answered, "I wrote a letter and told them about you, but they didn't believe me until they saw for themselves how ugly you are." She growled, and Lily sighed.

"We don't know them. They're only here for the week." She supplied.

"What're their names?" asked Mary, one of Umbridge's friends.

"Uh… Rachel, Salina, and…. Jamie. Yeah, that's right." I was so smart.

"Where are they from?" Dang it!

"Uh…"

"Winchester. It's a little school not far away. It's really small, you wouldn't have heard of it before." Lily saved the day.

"Oh, I think I might have heard of it." Mary said uncertainly.

"Well, of course I've heard of it, my uncle went to Winchester!" Katie said snottily. Wow they were dumb.

"Yeah, that's great. Well, we'll just be going now!" I tried. No such luck.

"You can't just hog the new kids, Adder, how about a game of truth or dare to get everyone comfortable?" Umbridge sneered. Dang it!

"Um, that's-"

"Sure," Sirius blurted out. Or should I say Salina? Whatever, it was one of them.

"That sounds fun." James agreed. Jamie. Don't get me started.

"We really should finish showing you three around!" Lily protested. She was thinking along the same lines I was. Truth or dare is always more revealing when it's just girls and neither of us wanted to be playing with three guys listening in. Besides, it could raise some interesting questions about the three new 'girls'.

"Well, we don't want to be rude!" Sirius put in innocently. Stupid git.

"Of course not." I conceded through gritted teeth. This was going to be a nightmare! We all sat down in a circle in the middle of the floor. Lily and I made sure to sit next to two of the marauders each so that we could help them if they needed a lie. Remus, smart boy (girl?) that he is, was starting to get nervous. He sat in the middle, between me and Lily. Sirius was on my right, and James was on Lily's left. The other three girls sat across from us.

"Who wants to go first?" Umbridge asked.

"Oh, I do!" Mary said quickly. I was starting to think they had planned this, which was ridiculous because they didn't know about this until five minutes ago.

"Alright then, go ahead." Umbridge said, like she needed to give permission or something.

"Salina, truth or dare?"