The next morning, I woke up to see three, what looked like from my point of view, very naked boys. They were looking down from the ledge that I had created. I looked around me and saw that I was lying curled up on Sirius, who was sprawled on the floor passed out. I looked up to them again confused, Remus had another cut on his cheek and James' hair was covered with twigs and mud. I started to get up and woke Sirius in the process. He looked around him bewildered for a moment before spotting me and going,
"Sleep well? You certainly kept me warm." I had stood up by this stage and shot him a dirty look. He pretended to be insulted and hurt clapping a hand to his chest, fake bawling. I, meanwhile, was figuring out whether it was better to raise the ground or to clamber up the mud and leave Sirius there. The boys looked at me and James said,
"We... um... kinda need clothes. We forgot ours and we have nothing to wear because we tore it last night," I let out a giggle and took off my t-shirt leaving me in my skin tight vest top that you could see my bright green bra. Sirius who had gotten up took one look at the bra and went,
"Really Hunter? Slytherin colours really? We would think that there was something wrong with you if we didn't live with you." I looked at him and replied,
"Right then, next time our mates are naked and I have to make them clothes, I will be sure to wear my red bra," before turning back to the boys and ripping the t-shirt into three and pulling out my wand. I then started to turn the bits of ripped up t-shirt into make shift clothes. When I was done I chucked them up to the boys and said quickly,
"Hurry on and get changed, I'm raising us up so unless you want me to see you better hurry up,' before throwing myself back on the ground (rather ungracefully might I add) and crossed my legs concentrating on raising the ground. I felt the ground shake as it rose and soon we were level with the rest of the ground. I opened my eyes to see the boys scrambling to put their make shift tops on. Their shorts kinda looked like boxers on them (they looked like they were going to fit before I threw them up) I got a good look at Remus's and James toned stomach before they pulled there tops down. Both Remus and James looked as if it had been a rough night, although Remus was the one covered in scratches. Once they were dressed I said,
"Now come on, before the rest of the castle wakes up," and we all scrambled into the castle and up to our dorm in the Gryffindor tower before the boys broke down laughing. James was whooping and laughing with Peter while Remus watched them and laughed at their obvious joy. I laughed at them before trying to calm them down by shushing them. When they had finally calmed down enough for me to speak I said,
"Right, from your delighted faces I can tell that you guys successfully changed into your animagus forms last night, so to celebrate how about we get a bottle of fire whiskey from Hogsmede later? Now, on a more important note," and Sirius finishes my sentence at the same time as me,
"What the hell did you guys change into?" We looked at each other in shock before looking at the guys. They looked shocked too but James snapped out of it first, puffed out his chest, looking incredibly proud (which looked utterly ridiculous in the roughly made clothes) and said,
"I turned into a stag," and Peter, looking slightly disappointed as he said in a sad voice,
"I turned into a rat," Sirius, sensing the disappointment said,
"Don't worry mate, it means that you can hit the knot to let us past the whomping willow," at that Peter perked up. I looked over to see Remus looking slightly pale and stumbling as he tried to walk towards his bedside cabinet. None of the guys noticed as he sat down and I waited until they had all changed and left before going over to him. He looked paler than before so I said giving him a pleading look,
"Please let me help," he slowly started lifting his shirt to reveal that the scratches where deeper than I originally thought. He then turned to show more on his back. After seeing the marks, I went to the bathroom and filled a basin with water and went back out to him. I grabbed the discarded t-shirt and soaked it in the water and started cleaning the cuts. When I finished cleaning them I grabbed my wand and began healing them. There wasn't one word said between the two of us but when the last cut had healed without scaring, Remus muttered a quiet,
"Thank you for doing this and thank you for not telling the guys that I was hurt," I nodded before getting up, making my way to my bed and grabbing some more clothes to change into and changing in the bathroom. I went down stairs to the common room to see all the boys including Remus, who had changed, waiting for me so that we could go down to Hogsmede. James looked down to his watch and tapped on it as if to tell me to hurry up so I just walked past them to the portrait door. Without a glance back I said,
"Well you coming or not?" I heard laughter behind me and footsteps meaning that the boys were coming. We spent most of our time at Hogsmede, either in the newly opened Zonkos joke shop or in Honeydukes, which was amazing, or the Three Broomsticks, with James and Sirius planning jokes while leaving me out. I didn't mind, I took the time to get the firewhiskey from Madame Rosemerta. She looked a bit sceptical when I said that I was 18 but she eventually believed me and handed me the bottles.
I went back to the table that the boys,
"I'm away back up to the castle. Have fun without me guys "I said, before gathering my stuff and leaving the pub. I made my way toward the castle when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see if it was the boys but it turned out to be a group of Slytherins. There was one that looked a lot like Sirius and another slightly older one who had blonde hair. I went to the younger one and said,
"You're Sirius Black's brother aren't you? I'm Hunter,"
"Yeah I'm Regulus. Why are you talking to me?" He replied looking at me, I looked at him funny but the older one interrupted the look and answered,
"What he means is that most of Sirius' friends try to curse him into oblivion for even looking at them. I'm Lucius by the way. Lucius Malfoy," I had heard of his family before. I heard that they were strict pure bloods like the Blacks. But I said none of this. Neither did I say that I was half blood and that my mother was muggle born. Instead I said,
"Why would I curse you? I don't know you but you guys seem kinda ok. I mean, you guys could turn out to be good craic if you could loosen up," they both gave me 'are you mad looks?' but I just linked arms with them and started walking them up to the castle.
They slowly loosened up the closer to the castle we got. When we got the entrance hall and we had to go our separate ways to our own common rooms we said our good byes and I ran back up to the boy's dorms and hid the firewhiskey. I went back down to the common room to see 'Evans', as James called her, sitting on one of the chairs.
I made my way over to her and plonked down beside her. She looked up from her book and went,
"Ohh, hey Hunter, I thought that you were James coming to ask me out again. You know, short hair and all,
I looked at her before concentrating on growing out the dark hair and throwing red, green, blue, yellow, and purple highlights in it. When it reached my waist I stopped growing it and looked back over to Lily, who looked shocked.
"Better? Don't want you to confuse me with James now do we Lily flower?" I laughed and she quickly got over her shock and started to laugh with me for calling her that. The boys came in during the middle of our laughing fit and James grabbed me out of my seat and pulled me over to one side.
"Did you say anything embarrassing about me to Lily? Why is she laughing?" He asked looking me in the eye. I just kept laughing but managed to blurt out a,
"Nothing about you James, I haven't hurt your chances any."
He looked at me in surprise and let go of my arm so I started to make my way back to Lily, but seeing that she was still laughing her head off (probably because James and I were standing beside each other after that horrible comparison) I crumpled to the floor in peals of laughter. Lily then started laughing harder because I was lying on the floor and I heard her topple to the ground too.
When we managed to calm down enough to sit up I saw the boys looking very bewildered and then Sirius muttered
"Girls!"
Lily must have heard as we both stared laughing we calmed down for the second time the boys were laughing at us still but we managed to keep ourselves calm with only a few wee giggles escaping. She slowly stood up and brushed herself off.
"I gotta go but thanks for the laugh. I'll talk to you later, okay," she said. I nodded back to her and she left leaving me in the Gryffindor common room floor surrounded by confused boys. I stuck my hand up and Sirius grabbed it and heaved me to my feet. I then acted as if that fit had never happened and went up to our dorm room with the boys following behind. When we got up there the boys also acted as if they hadn't seen two girls braking down in laughter. I went over to my bed and flopped onto it burying my head into the pillows.
Suddenly I was hung upside down by a well-placed levicorpus charm. I saw that it was Sirius that held the offending wand but I did nothing to stop it. Then James came right up close to my face.
"What the hell is up with your hair? It wasn't this long earlier," he asked.
"Personally, I quite like it. It's nice," Sirius then said. I gave him a smile but then turned to James.
"I grew it because I was done being compared to a guy, mainly you by the way, and I wanted a change," I said.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away so I did the only logical thing to do. I grabbed my book of the bedside table and started to read upside down. Remus saw this and started to laugh which caught the other boy's attention, so they turned to look at me reading upside-down with a bright red face from all the blood flow that was going to my face.
"There's firewhiskey under my bed," I stage whispered to Remus. He rolled his eyes but before he got up to go under my bed and get them Sirius, who was still levitating me, dove under the bed and grabbed the drink. He then shimmied himself out again only he had in his possession something none of them where meant to see. Sirius had a sly grin and before the other boys saw it he slipped the small book into his pocket. He stood up, fixing his t-shirt. Popping open the lid he took a swing of the whiskey.
"It's the real thing. How'd you get it?" he asked taking a second swing before passing it on to James.
"Being able to change your appearance at will tends to mean that you become very good at getting into places you're not meant to and getting things you're not meant to," came my reply. Then they shrugged their shoulders said,
"Good job," and turned back to the firewhiskey which Peter now had a hold of it. I went back to my book and Remus came over grabbed the other bottle from under my bed, opened it, took a swing and passed it to me. Taking swings of alcohol while upside down is not easy but I managed a few before passing the bottle back to Remus who took another couple and put the bottle down. He was a little buzzed but I was fine and I watched as the hours went by and the boys became drunker and drunker, until 10ish when they were pretending to be each other. Then they all crowded round my bed and sat in a circle.
"Truth or dare babe?" Sirius asked, looking at me.
"Truth obviously, since I'm still upside down," I replied and Peter, who was worse for wear, burst out laughing.
"Alright, alright, which one of us boys is the best looking and the one who you would date," I made a thinking face and was about to answer when the door opened to reveal a smallish girl who was in her pjs crying clutching a letter.
"Hunter," she said before a small sob escaped her chest. Sirius was obviously sober enough to realise that I needed to be let down and dropped me. I quickly got up ignoring the pounding in my head as the blood drained from it and stumbled my way over to the door where the girl was standing crying. "What's happened sweet heart? Is it something at home?" at that she sobbed again. I gently took the note from her hand and read it. I gasped when I read that her parents had died and hugged her close. I started shushing in her ear when the boys came closer. I handed the letter to Remus, who whispered it to the other boys. When he had finished reading it the boys stayed quiet.
"Shhh, it's alright Julie-bug. It's gonna be ok, you can stay here tonight," I said looking up to the boys to see if it was ok. They all nodded and I picked Julie and carried her to my bed. I pulled the covers back and set her in. The boys had followed my movements and I motioned for them to follow me into the bathroom. When James came in I closed the door and gave them an apologetic look.
"I'm really sorry guys, if you guys don't want her here I can try to find somewhere else to take her, it's just I know what's it's like to lose my parents and I know how painful it is and I don't want her to be on her own like I was," James was the first to speak after my small monologue.
"It's ok, she can stay here as long as she needs to," the others nodded in agreement and I nodded back before opening the door. I went back to Julie and instead of putting my pjs on I slipped my t-shirt and jeans leaving me in my tank top and undies before I climbed into the bed and just hugged the poor girl. Peter made his way towards us looking solemn before pulling a firewhiskey bottle from behind his back and saying to Julie,
"Want some firewhiskey, for the nerves like?" I gave him a shocked look and slapped the bottle away causing a giggle to escape Julie. I looked down at her to see her giggling while tears continued rolling down her face. This must have given the boys an idea because the next minute there was a charm cast on my bed making it larger and all the boys had climbed in and where trying to cheer her up. Remus was beside her and James behind him and Sirius was beside me with Peter at the foot of the bed.
James was telling her of all the times he had asked Lily out, when Sirius whispered in my ear.
"Well, who would you have picked?" he asked. I looked over my shoulder so see him close behind me.
"You", I said before Julie started to giggle at something James had said pulling my attention away from him and back to her but I felt him come closer to me.