Okay, so I have good news and bad news for you, dear readers! And seeing as I'm always starting with the good ones... here we finally go for an update! It's a longer (cheers :D) and more eventful chapter! Lean back and enjoy it people, and we'll take the bad news later on.

3. Convincing redheads

Sirius had now learnt the hard way how very exhausting it could be to keep Remus and Lily from speaking to each other. There constantly seemed to be something Lily needed to hear Remus' opinion on, and that wouldn't do; because regardless of who of them who'd be initiating the meeting, the two of them talking could always lead to Remus bringing the forthcoming weekend's plans up – and until Sirius had gotten around to talk to Evans, that would be a positively disastrous thing.

But Sirius couldn't possibly let other people know he'd talk to Evans – heck, he didn't even plan on letting Lily herself know it either – so at the end of the day he had both good news and bad ones on his mind.

The good ones were that Sirius had managed to prevent the hazel-eyed werewolf and the redheaded witch from saying anything to each other, other than the formal greetings at dinner. However, the bad news were that he had yet to manage catching up with her in private. Ironically, once he really needed her in a remote corner of the library, Lily had for some strange reason decided to revise and finish all of her schoolwork right in the crowded common room. And apparently, she had lots of schoolwork.

Needless to say, Sirius didn't like this. He didn't like this one bit. Because before you knew it, it was bedtime, and everyone started to head up to their respective dormitories soon enough. Everyone, including the Marauders but excluding stubborn Lily Evans.

Oh, well. It looked like he would perhaps get his opportunity now, then. Probably a pretty bad one – in which he'd probably need to give up hours of sleep as well as be forced to face a sleepy, and undoubtedly somewhat snappy, Evans – but it was still an opportunity he couldn't afford missing.

And so, Sirius Black started to follow through with his plan.

Step 1: Wait 'til everyone's gone to bed.

As all the sixth-year gryffindor boys were gathered in their dorm, James had gotten the idea to explore all the ladies' rooms of the school – yes, weird enough, but he claimed to have heard rumours of this 'Chamber of Secrets', and of course he wanted the Marauders to know everything about the castle (possibly adding it to the map) – and he immediately started plotting on when and how they would do this.

"But what if there are girls in there at the time?" James asked himself, though he said it out loud so that his fellow Marauders would be able to help him figure out an answer. "How do we distract them?"

Sirius gave a sigh and stood just to pull his shirt off and stand looking at the others. They had all seen him wearing less before – he always tended to sleep in nothing but his boxers in the summertime – yet two out of three of the other guys seemed slightly awkward by this. The third smiled mockingly while trying to frown, and said:

"You do realise that those girls could be far too young for that to work as a distraction, Padfoot?"

"Oh bugger off, Prongs", Sirius replied, James' smile mirrored in his face. "I'm going to bed", he then shocked everyone by proclaiming. Not that it wasn't late, but he was never the one to go to bed first.

"Are you sick?" James asked jokingly, though still wide-eyed.

"Nope, just tired", he assured seriously; because he knew that if he retorted with witty jokes himself, he wouldn't pull the tired-façade off without suspicions.

Luckily for him, Remus followed his example and changed to his bed time attire as well, and Peter was obviously never one to go counter current. This left James to be the last one up, and as he didn't see the point in staying up all by himself, soon all the sixteen-year-olds had climbed under their sheets.

Step 2: Make sure no one will be awakened again.

When Sirius had laid silent, eyes closed and motionless in his bed for a while, he could hear snoring emerge from behind the curtains of two of the other beds, and once he listened carefully he could also discern the light, relaxed breathing indicating that Remus had also fallen asleep by then.

Sirius got to his feet slowly and silently, grabbed the goblet of Polyjuice Potion from his beside table – after lifting the Disillusionment Charm over it, of course – and then proceeded to cast silencing charms towards each of the three closed curtains.

Step 3: Turn into James.

The black-haired youth sneaked across the room – even though sneaking was in fact unnecessary at the moment, he enjoyed himself by raising the tension and hummed the team song of an action movie he'd seen when visiting Peter some time ago – and he carefully opened James' curtains and reached a hand towards his pillow to get hold of a stray of his messy-haired friend's hair.

He smiled in triumph as he dropped the hair into the potion and watched it turn a golden-brown colour, but that smile efficiently faded from his face only to be replaced with a grimace as he swallowed the first gulp of the liquid.

Ugh! He sure hoped that this would be worth it!

Moments later, another James Potter was standing almost naked beside the bed in which James the Original snoozed. Sirius inspected whichever body parts he was able to see to make sure he had actually changed, even if he suspected that things were still going according to the plan only by establishing that his hair had shortened a great deal and felt very messy as he pulled a hand through it.

Sirius reached for James' clothes – which said boy had just tossed onto the floor the way the dog animagus also did – and pulled them on quickly, knowing that his target of attention would react immediately and get rather suspicious if he didn't wear the prefect's badge that was attached to James' robe.

He went into the bathroom quickly to check how he looked, and once he'd seen James' reflection looking right back at him – kind of creepy – he left the his dormitory and headed downstairs, praying that Lily hadn't gone up to bed yet.

This seemed to be his lucky day – or night, rather. But now came the hard part:

Step 4: Convince Evans to play along in this darn game.

"Lily? Lily-flower?" he said, trying to imitate his best mate.

"Potter, I have enough to do right now without having you try to gain my attention", the redhead snapped right away. Cranky when tired, Sirius stated in his mind.

"You should go to bed", he commented. He only said this because he wanted to open up for a conversation, though; the last thing he wanted right now was for her to leave, and that was why he wouldn't have said it if he hadn't known for sure that she wouldn't follow his 'advice'.

Lily lifted her head to glare at him for a moment. "I. Can't", she hissed. "I've got things to do, which you would've noticed if you'd taken a second to look around before approaching me in the middle of the night."

"Ancient Runes", Sirius stated after recognising the book she was bent over as the one Remus had worked with earlier. "Too bad I don't take that subject." Not bad. It seemed a total bore. And he was lucky James didn't take it either. "Would've helped you if I could, you know." Yet another lie. But it seemed like something James would say to her.

Lily tore her gaze away from her book once more to look at him sceptically. "What are you even doing up at this hour, Potter?" she asked, seemingly uncaring. "I swear, if you tell me you just came to keep me company…!"

"I need to talk to you", Sirius admitted.

"The answer is no", she informed sharply.

"You don't even know what I was going to say yet", he protested.

"Oh!" she said, and eyebrow raised almost warningly. "So it didn't have anything to do with asking me out again?"

Sirius hesitated. "Well… that's only a part of it. And it's not the important thing here…"

"Forget it, Potter."

"Call me James, will you?" Lily rolled her eyes and went back to working on her essay. "And just listen to me. Please."

Sirius didn't usually use that p-word, but it always seemed to work on Remus – especially in combination with his infamous puppy-dog-eyes – so he hoped for luck now as well.

The redheaded witch didn't look up at him again, but she stopped writing and held still in the position she was in, which was good enough for him.

"Okay, here's the deal", he said in a somewhat higher voice, to make sure that she'd get that he was serious (not to be taken literally this time, though) and that she'd hear him out: "Sirius and I had been going on about how Remus needed to get himself a girlfriend, again..." he lied, and apparently he did this well because he was already interrupted by a quite annoyed Lily Evans who snapped her head back up to look at him instantly.

"Seriously, you guys should just quit bugging him about this; it's none of your business and you're only making things worse by saying stuff like that to him!" she snarled intensively. "Believe me, he doesn't want a bloody girlfriend, so just do him and yourself a favour and stay out of it!"

"Geez, Ev- Lily!" Sirius exclaimed and raised his hands into the air in surrender, though Lily seemed unimpressed by this. "Chill, okay? I know we shouldn't talk like that, but anyway, that's not the point."

Actually, Sirius was pretty curious about the reasons behind Lily's livid reaction. But he knew just as well how he needed to leave this subject in order to have enough time to "break the news" and try to convince her. Thus, he carried on.

"Now for the interesting part", he said and leaned in slightly closer to her, surprised when she didn't move away. "I guess Rem got tired of us... fully understandable!" he added at the irritated glare she sent his way. "... And so he said that he'd ask someone out as soon as J- I took you on a date."

Lily looked straight at him, her green eyes shining brightly almost as if amazed over how wondrously thick he – James – seemed to be.

"He just wanted to make it clear that he had no intention of asking anyone out, stupid", she thought, and rolled her eyes at him. However, she still listened intently as he continued, secretly cursing the fact that she still hadn't come up with a way of getting Remus together with Sirius without simply telling the latter boy how Remus felt – which would be betraying the trust she knew that her friend put in her.

"Well, that was my initial reaction as well", Sirius continued, and Lily didn't look down at her pieces of parchment again. "But the way he looked at us, straight in the eyes... it was almost as if he dared us or something, like he made a deal. As if he already planned on asking someone out and was just looking for an excuse to do so", Sirius explained, but he instantly regretted the way he'd phrased it as he heard how that sounded far too much like him and not like Moony at all.

Surprisingly enough, Lily actually seemed to think his words through, as if they could somehow make sense to her. Sirius suddenly felt uneasy. What did she know about Remus that none of the Marauders knew? Was there actually someone he liked? But Evans had seemed very keen to let him believe otherwise just a minute ago.

"Who is this 'someone' you talk about?" Lily asked, and though Sirius Black was normally exceptionally good at reading people, this only made him all the more confused; because Lily both sounded and looked like she didn't even expect him to know the answer to this, almost as if she asked him merely to control the facts.

"I don't know", Sirius said, James' voice sounding like he was suddenly becoming introvert; as if trying to prepare to defend himself. "He wouldn't say."

That wasn't technically a lie, even though they hadn't really asked Remus about things like these for real. Lily nodded, seemingly to herself, as if all of this actually sounded sensible in her ears.

"But I was thinking... you know, he's seemed kind of... sad lately", he continued, and this was in fact completely true, even though Remus had only appeared like something was bothering him when he thought no one noticed; but Sirius always noticed, even if he didn't understand the reason behind his beloved friend's bad mood. "I think going on a date with someone would perhaps cheer him up a bit."

The night seemed completely full of surprises; the redhead nodded once again, thoughtfully. Though all of a sudden she seemed to come together again, and her formerly quite glazed gaze went warning again, albeit half-heartedly.

"I'm guessing you've put even more thinking into this", she said, and for a split second it was almost as if a tiny, tiny part of her was amused.

Sirius nodded hopefully. "I have", he confirmed, "and though I'd really have liked our first date to have been in private, I thought we – the four of us, whoever this fourth person might be – could go on a double date; you know, to convince him we're actually going out as well. Because, I trust Remus always to stick to his words, but you know him too, Lils. Isn't it quite probable that he'd like to have heavy proof that we'd keep our part of the deal up as well, before he rushed into something?"

Sirius was very proud of how convincing he seemed now, even to himself, and Lily seemed to swallow the bait whole.

"Actually, that does seem quite likely", she admitted – not sounding half as reluctant as she'd probably like herself to. "Okay, so when do you plan to carry this out? I'm sure you have the date set already, isn't that so?" she said, almost smiling for a moment.

"I was thinking this weekend, since we're going to Hogsmeade and everything?" Sirius said, with just the right amount of skilfully toned hesitation for it to seem like a mere suggestion of which he was asking for her approval of. Of course, it simply wouldn't do if she'd refuse him now. "If you don't have plans already, that is", he added to seem like the perfect, considerate gentleman. James would've been proud.

"I guess that would work..." Lily admitted tentatively. "If and only if you make sure that Remus does his part until then. Though I'd be surprised if he actually did."

"No worries, I'll drop him some hints and help bring forward his gryffindor courage. It's somewhere down there alright, just waiting to surface", Sirius smiled, and he simply couldn't hide the affection he felt for the boy he was thinking and talking of.

Lily saw the earnestness of the emotion that reflected through his – James' – eyes, and this actually got to her right away. She looked upon the face she'd once thought was only displaying immaturity and too much self-esteem, and registered the fondness in surprised appreciation.

"In that case, I'll do it", she agreed honestly, then her eyes seemed to twinkle in a quite Marauder-like way as she added: "For Remus, so don't get your hopes all up the roof."

Sirius actually laughed with Lily for once. "No worries, Lils: Saturday will be Remus' day", he assured, proud of having gotten away with calling her 'Lils' twice now, whereas James normally never got to call her that. "I can take you out another time and focus entirely on making sure you have a nice time – even if you'll most certainly have a nice time this time as well, don't get me wrong", he smiled; not that overly-confident I'm-the-king-of-the-world smile of James', but the absolutely charming I'm-not-as-much-of-a-shallow-git-as-you-think smile that he pulled off all on his own.

Lily gave a small smile back at this while shaking her head with a sigh, not bothering to go down that usual road of denying him a date; after all, this was much of an unusual moment, and even though she was tired and she knew that he'd taken much of her time for work this night, she couldn't help but think that she'd perhaps been mistaken in judging James Potter as an immature idiot so quickly after all.

Sirius nodded one last time, trusting Lily to keep her word without needing to seal it with a spell – and furthermore trusting her to be quite offended if he'd suggest such a thing, anyway. So he got to his feet, flashing her a quick, pitying and apologetic look as he once again let his eyes drift to her unfinished essay for a moment, before turning around to head for the stairs with a short:

"Goodnight, Lily."

Okay, so how did that work out to ya? I kinda wanted Sirius to play the part of good, supporting friend here and not screw up James' chances of even getting to go on a date, so if someone finds that out of character I guess it's all right! :)

As for those bad news I was talking about... well, I'm going on vacation tomorrow (to Italy, my family do that pretty much every summer, so this'll be my forteenth time) and I'll be gone for about two weeks and a half WITH NO COMPUTER AVAILABLE TO EVEN CAST LONGING GLIMPSES AT! Which means, I'm very, very sorry to have to inform you guys that I won't be able to update this thing until July 26th, earliest! Sorry, you'll just have to be incredibly patient and nice, understanding readers who will not forget my story once it's finally being updated again, okay? Deal.

Also, I need help writing the actual dating chapter, if it comes down to that :P so anyone got any ideas on where they (the four of them) will go, or what they'll do? I'd very much apprechiate hints and advices and lots of opinions here, since I've never actually written a dating instalment before! Wish me good luck with that ;D Hopefully you'll review me as soon as you've read the chapter and tell me of ideas or just what you guys think, so that I'll be pleasantly surprised once I get home again, but I'm getting worried! Couldn't help but notice how I've recieved more than three times the alerts and favs than I have gotten reviews, which is kinda sad *pouts* as I know for a fact that quite a lot of readers are bound to have opinions about what they read...

Not that I tell you to stop adding this story o alerts (quite the contrary actually, it would probably be a good idea to do so considering the aforementioned bad news...) but I'd very much like it if you took the seconds of effort and dropped me a line on what you think, so that I know what you would want me to write and what I should improve... But I know also that I'm slightly the hypocrit as I've been unusually (terribly) bad at replying to reviews. I'd want all of you out there to know how much I apprechiate that you're reading what I'm writing, and to my reviewers that I absolutely LOVE you guys for telling me in your own words what you think instead of having me guess! ILY all! :D