A/N: Don't freak out! *ducks to avoid air-born objects* I know it's been two and a half weeks since I updated and you guys are all used to me updating every other day, but I've been busy with college and that comes first. But to make up for it, I present you with the longest chapter yet! Enjoy!
Chapter Dedications: snakelover17, Kat-2324, pihead08, mekio777, primeval girl, CrazyMuggleborn44, mayalewis16, and YuumiBat in order of reviews and such. Thanks for all the feedback!
Chapter Sixteen
The next day, exactly a week before Hallowe'en, Dustin sent a package to Rain in the mail via owl post.
She and Remus had been released by Madame Pomfrey after a full half hour of fussing that morning, so they nearly missed the flock of owls streaming into the Great Hall. As soon as they sat down, the large barn owl Rain had sent off to her brother two days ago landed in front of her and deposited a small package into her plate.
"What's that, Rain?" asked Peter, ever the curious one.
"Care package from my brother," she responded mischievously.
"I know that look," said Sirius suspiciously.
"Yeah," said James. "Some poor bloke's gonna get it."
"That 'poor bloke' as you call him, totally deserves it," said Rain, her accent faltering.
"Who got on your bad side this time, Rain?" asked Sirius.
"Lucius Malfoy," she growled.
"What did he do?" Peter asked, half frightened.
"He and the other fifth year Slytherins were harassing Regulus the other day about hanging around a 'Mudblood'. They're all in for it, but him especially."
"Count me in," said Sirius. "Nobody messes with my brother and gets away with it."
"Me too," said James. "What have you got planned?"
Rain picked up the parcel from Dustin and got up from the table. "I'll tell you at break, meet me by the oak tree near the lake."
Later, after her first class, Rain headed out onto the grounds to meet the rest of the Marauders. Under one arm was the box of goods her brother sent. As she approached the lake, she caught sight of her friends hanging out by the old oak tree.
"Hey, Rain," James called when he spotted her.
"Hi again, Prongs," Rain said when she reached her destination.
She sat down in the grass, putting the box in front of her, and the others sat also and crowded around.
"You called me 'Prongs'," James observed, surprised.
"Yeah, so?" said Rain, confused.
"You never call me 'Prongs'."
"Well, I decided when you told me the reasons behind your pet names, that I wouldn't call you by them until Moony felt comfortable enough to tell me the reason behind his."
Three jaws dropped.
"You mean you know?" Peter asked in awe.
"That Moony's a werewolf? Yeah," she said rather offhand, like someone being a werewolf was commonplace where she came from.
Their jaws dropped again at the word 'werewolf'.
"What made him tell you?" James asked, looking towards Remus. "Was it the Boggart?"
"Actually," said Remus. "She figured it out for herself."
"WHAT!" cried the two voices of James and Sirius.
"What what?" Rain asked in shock.
"You've been at Hogwarts less than two months!" Sirius said, rather miffed.
"So?"
"So, we didn't figure it out for three years!" James said, also miffed.
Rain shrugged. "I had more clues than you, that's all."
The boys calmed down at this and stared at the ground in frustration. Peter, however, had other ideas.
"So are you gonna tell us what's in the box?" he asked impatiently.
"Right," said Rain and James and Sirius perked up. "I wanted to do this the Muggle way, that way it can't be traced back to Regulus in any way."
"But then it'll be traced back to you," Remus pointed out.
"Yeah, but I don't care," said Rain. "Plus, if I do this right, it won't be traced back to me either."
"So what's in the box?" Peter was getting beyond impatient at this point.
"Slow your roll, Wormtail, I'm getting to it," Rain soothed. "So I needed supplies of the Muggle variety. So I sent off to my brother to get me said supplies."
At this she opened the box and Peter leaned in excitedly, finally getting to see what was inside. Rain pulled out tubes and jars and cartons, a couple bearing the logo of some joke shop in Sutton, where she lived.
"This," she said, holding up a carton. "Is itching powder. It's the same as an Itching Jinx, but a lot harder to remove."
"A Scouring Charm would work," said Remus.
"Ah, but Moony, they wouldn't know that, not knowing what was causing the itchiness."
"Nice one," said Sirius in approval.
"Next is Icy-Hot," said Rain, holding out a tube of said substance. "First it's really cold, then really hot. If you put it in the right places, it creates a rather amusing result."
"Where are you going to put it?" James asked.
"Any surface that is often touched; door handles, toilet seats," she got an evil glint in her eye. "Wands."
"Diabolical," James murmured respectfully.
Rain just grinned and picked up a couple of small cartons. "This is Jell-O powder," she explained. "When mixed with water, it turns into gelatin."
"Cool," said Peter. "What're you going to do with it?"
"It's going to go into several toilets in the fifth years' lavatories. The best part is, you can't flush it."
The boys all snickered and Rain grabbed a few small tubes of colourful liquid.
"These are food colouring," she explained. "It's going to go into their shampoo and will change the hair colour of certain fair haired fifth years."
"How long will it last?" Sirius asked.
"A couple of days, and I don't think there are any spells that will get it out."
"I don't know any," said Remus.
Rain then picked up what appeared to be two chocolate bars.
"These are for Crabbe and Goyle," she said mischievously. "They're such gluttons, that they won't even be suspicious of random chocolate."
"What's wrong with it?" Peter asked, eying the bars as if he wanted one.
"They're X-Lax disguised as chocolate. To put it mildly, they'd make you require the use of the toilet for the entire day if you were to eat one."
The boys all wrinkled their noses in disgust.
"And voila! La pièce derésistance!" Rain declared dramatically, holding aloft a couple of cans with aerosol nozzles on top. "Spray paint!"
"What's that?" James asked.
Rain looked at him incredulously. "Spray paint," she said again only this time a little disappointed they weren't sharing her enthusiasm for the colourful cans. "Used for graffiti?"
Three of the four boys were still looking at her as if she had sprouted another head. She looked to Remus for help as he had a Muggle mother and knew a thing or two about such matters.
"Perhaps you should demonstrate," he suggested.
"On what?" Rain asked. "I'm not just gonna mark up the trees, Moony."
"Here," he said, picking up a stick. "Paint this."
So Rain took the stick from him and shook up one of the cans, then, holding both the stick and the can away from everyone, she sprayed the stick purple.
"Woah!" Peter exclaimed.
"What are you gonna do with that?" James asked, eyes wide with excitement.
"I'm gonna graffiti up their dormitory of course," Rain said.
"I want to help," said Sirius.
"Well, I don't really know how you can, Padfoot," Rain replied. "You can't get into the Slytherin common room without being noticed."
Sirius turned to James with a bright grin across hi face. James, understanding immediately, smiled back then turned to Rain.
"What if I said I had a way to get around the castle without being seen by anyone?" he asked.
"I'd say that was awesome," said Rain. "But how is that?"
James sat up. "We'll tell you after dinner. Patronus lessons this week are canceled for some much needed pranking!"
...
Rain decided not to tell Regulus about her plans for Malfoy and the other fifth year boys. He wasn't really one to try and draw attention to himself and she didn't want to make him look guilty just by knowing who did it. No that was definitely not the effect she was going for. So the two friends sat at lunch as usual and talked about whatever crossed their minds.
"So I heard there was some incident in your Defence class yesterday," Regulus commented while taking a sip of pumpkin juice.
"Uh...yeah," said Rain awkwardly. "We were learning about Bogarts."
"Let me guess, someone's Bogart went on a rampage around the room."
"Something like that. It was mine actually."
"Really? What was it?"
"A werewolf," Rain looked down, remembering how Remus had gotten hurt because of her.
"I heard about that," Tanner Lewis butt in. "Your werewolf-Bogart mauled some Gryffindor, didn't it?"
That brought Rain up short. Was Tanner really talking to her?
"Yeah, something like that," she hedged.
A couple more Slytherins turned to listen and Rain realized what was happening; they wanted to hear gruesome details about the mauling of a Gryffindor by a werewolf. She thought she was going to be sick.
"Wouldn't that person become a werewolf, then?" Tabitha McAilot, a fourth year, asked with morbid fascination.
"Who was it that got attacked?" asked a sixth year boy.
"It was Lupin, I was there," said Stephan Nott.
Regulus looked across the Hall at the Gryffindor table and spotted Remus sitting with the other Marauders, oblivious of what was going on at the other side of the Hall.
"He doesn't look mauled to me," he said.
"Well Madame Pomfrey is that good isn't she," Nott retorted. "Isn't that right, Bone? You were there in the Hospital Wing with him."
Rain was shocked to be addressed by Nott of all people, but even more so that he hadn't addressed her as 'Mudblood', that she just nodded jerkily.
"Well is he a werewolf or isn't he?" Tabitha asked impatiently.
Rain searched her mind frantically for an answer before stammering out. "N-no, he's not. Madame Pomfrey said th-that since it wasn't an actual w-werewolf that attacked him, and it wasn't the f-full moon, th-that he would be fine."
"Too bad," said a third year. "One less Gryffindor would be nice."
Rain started to shake.
"But it's good that he's not a werewolf, right?" Regulus jumped in, noticing Rain's distress. "I mean, we're safe from that then."
"True," said Tanner. "But I think they might have booted him out for everyone's safety."
"Dumbledore wouldn't allow that," Rain piped up, still shaking.
"Bone does have a point," said Rudric Scrate, a seventh year. "That Muggle-lover probably loves werewolves too, filthy creatures."
As they were talking Rain decided she couldn't handle it anymore and quietly sneaked away before she said something she'd regret. Regulus was about to follow her but was pulled back into the conversation.
She walked up the corridor leading to her Muggle Studies class. Maybe a lesson from Professor Caput would cheer her up. That man really was funny and some of her classmates were no better.
Rain was ten minutes early so she sat down and pulled out her notebook and pen. She had been more than relieved to hear Caput tell the class on the first day that they would be using Muggle stationary. Writing with a quill was simply ridiculous, and Rain always had splotch marks to magically vanish by the end. Though she would have preferred a pencil, pens were still preferable to quills.
When everyone finally showed up, Caput came in from the back room where he kept all the 'Muggle artifacts'.
"Good afternoon, class," he said cheerfully.
"Good afternoon, Professor Caput," the class chimed happily.
"I have a very special lesson planned for today. We are going to be learning about Muggle Magic."
Rain smirked, this would prove to be a nice diversion. The rest of the class murmured in confusion.
"I can see most of you are confused, so I shall explain; Muggles have their own form of magic that isn't really magic, and simply looks like it. One famous example is one Harry Houdini, who was known for escaping any confine withing minutes. Rain," he said suddenly making her jump. "Do you know any Muggle magic?"
"Um, I know a few tricks my uncle taught me, they're nothing really special—" she started.
"Nonsense," said Caput. "Would you care to demonstrate?"
"Um, sure. Do you have a pack of cards?"
"I certainly do," he said conjuring up a deck of regular playing cards.
Rain then spent the next twenty minutes amazing her classmates by pulling their cards from the deck. She found it very amusing how they would exclaim and clap when all she was doing was cleverly diverting their attention while she shuffled the pack in a specific way to bring their card to the top of the pile.
By the end of the class, Rain had nearly forgotten all about the incident at the Slytherin table. Nearly. It was as she entered the Great Hall for dinner that she remembered. Instead of the usual jeers and catcalls from her house mates, she got hushed murmurs as she passed the table.
"What was that all about?" Sirius asked as she sat down, noticing the attention she was getting.
"Rumors have spread about some Gryffindor being mauled by a Bogart pretending to be a werewolf," she said pointedly, looking at Remus as she did. "The Slytherins have discovered that it was my Bogart and that it was Moony it attacked."
Remus' eyes went wide. "What?" he cried in a whisper.
"Don't worry, I told them that since it's a Bogart and not an actual werewolf, you'd be fine. I think they bought it."
Remus relaxed a little.
"Close one, mate," said James.
"Yeah," he said, relaxing a little further and taking a sip of water from his goblet.
"So are we gonna tell Rain about the Invis—" Peter began.
"Shut it, Wormtail!" James cut across him.
"Yeah, time and place, mate," said Sirius.
"Tell me what?" Rain asked.
"After dinner," said James. "So hurry up."
Rain quickly scarfed down her rice and vegetables, while the boys did the same with their mountains of food. After they were done and Peter had the hiccups from eating too fast, they left the Great Hall.
Instead of going towards the courtyard, where they always practiced Patronuses, James and Sirius led them towards the dungeons and the Slytherin common room. Halfway down the corridor, they stopped and turned to face the female Marauder.
"Rain," James began. "You have proven yourself to be a trustworthy Marauder, and therefore, I have chosen to reveal to you, this," and at that word, from under the back of his shirt, the bulge hidden by his robes, he pulled something fluid and silvery.
Rain stared at it in confusion. It was certainly beautify, but what was it?
"This, my friend, is an Invisibility Cloak," James continued, noticing her confusion. "You put it on and you'll become invisible."
Rain's eyes lit up at this.
"You and Padfoot are gonna us this to get back at Malfoy and them," he concluded.
"So that's how you're going to get into the Slytherin common room," Rain deduced.
"Exactly," Sirius confirmed.
...
Later that night, when everyone in the Slytherin house had gone to sleep, Rain crept up the passage leading from the girl's dorms to the common room, and pushed on the panel to open the secret door in the wall and stepped out into the drafty corridor to wait for Sirius.
She had only waiting five minutes when she heard soft footfalls that she would have missed if she hadn't been listening for them. When the footfalls were close enough for her to determine it wasn't Filch she called out softly.
"Padfoot?"
Suddenly Sirius' head was floating in midair in front of her. She almost screamed in shock, and probably would have if she hadn't clapped her hand over her mouth. Sirius just smirked.
"You did that on purpose, you little prat!" she whispered at him furiously.
"You expected less?" he whispered back cheekily.
Rain huffed and turned back to the black brick wall.
"What's the password?" Sirius asked.
"Basilisk," Rain responded and the wall opened up.
"Slytherins are like a different species," Sirius commented, looking around at what was probably a huge contrast between this common room and the Gryffindor one.
"Oi," whispered Rain, affronted.
"Present company excluded of course," he amended.
"And how about your brother?"
"Well, maybe him, too, I suppose," he conceded. "Where's your 'care package'?"
"In my dormitory, wait here, keep the Cloak on."
Rain ran down the passage towards the girls' dormitories and slipped into the fourth years' dorm, quietly grabbing her box of 'supplies'.
When she got back to the common room, Sirius was waiting underneath the Invisibility Cloak. She divided up the supplies between them and told him what to do with them. After only half an hour of setup, they were done. They had run into a small snag with the spray paint at one point as it made a lot of noise when spraying, but thanks to a clever silencing spell from Rain, they had been able to proceed.
After they were done, Rain was reminded of 'Muggle Magic' and chuckled quietly to herself as she saw Sirius out of the common room. He had requested to keep the remainder of the supplies, and, not wanting to be caught with them, Rain gave them up quite willingly.
After all was done, she settled down in her four poster bed and fell asleep. Tomorrow would be a great day.
A/N: So this chapter was my longest so far, I can't believe how long it took, though. 2,885 words and it took two and a half weeks. Granted I wasn't writing that whole time... Anyway, you know what to do! R&R!