Disclaimer: I'm just going to sit here for a minute and try really hard to be J.K Rowling...(contemplative silence)...nope. Still don't own this stuff.

(A/N: You get that it crushes my soul when you don't leave reviews, right?)

Chapter 3: Bad Timing

Sirius was fighting back a strong desire to jab Peter in the eye with his own quill.

"We've been at this for ages, Wormtail. How did you still manage…that?"

Peter's shoulders slumped. After four straight days of the same lesson, James knew as much of the subject matter as Slughorn himself, and Sirius was probably capable of doing the classwork in his sleep. Remus spent most of the class looking pale, peaky, and unhappy, but had mastered the potion easily enough. Peter, however, had managed only to discover four completely different and equally disastrous ways to make something which was more or less entirely unlike a hiccupping solution.

"Well…" said Peter, his round face screwed up in a concentrated effort as he brandished his wand at his cauldron, though this was having no noticeable effect on its contents, "…it does look a bit…yellow…"

"A bit? It looks like a liquefied canary, Peter."

James didn't bother saying that it very well could have been, considering that Lily had sent one flying at his head ten minutes ago when he'd asked her out for the third time that morning. He didn't bother because he was trying to think.

"Er…should it be…smoking like that?"

"No, and it shouldn't be on fire ei—Prongs?"

James had suddenly stood, and with a little more purpose in his usual swagger, was headed straight towards—

"Evans," he said when his face was roughly an inch from hers, "what is your problem?"

"Well," she said coolly and without taking her eyes off her cauldron, "just now it's that some complete tosser is hovering over my workspace."

James didn't so much as blink. "I just want to know what it is about me that bothers you so bloody much, and I'm not moving from this spot until you give me an answer."

Lily looked up at him, emerald eyes perfectly calm, and said, "It's more the fact that you exist, if you know what I mean..."

James tried to stare her down, but Lily didn't say a single word to him for the remainder of the period.

Girls really did have terribly long memories.

OoOoOo

In the common room some hours later, James was sprawled across an overstuffed chair and still sulking.

"Prongs," Sirius began gently.

"What?" said James with marked disinterest. His voice was bitter and somewhat strained.

In retrospect, Sirius thought, he hadn't really had anything to say. At least not anything that would help. He looked hopefully at Remus.

"Maybe it wouldn't hurt to…see some other people?" Remus suggested. It took every ounce of restraint he possessed to keep from saying this in his I-told-you-so voice. "I don't know if you've noticed, James, but you're actually quite popular. Any other girl would be—"

But James wasn't listening. Wasn't it obvious enough by now that he didn't want any other girl? Lily was different. Lily was special. Lily was…was…

…was walking straight past him with Mary Macdonald and ignoring him completely.

Remus and Sirius each grabbed one of his arms, holding him back the moment he tried to stand. "Don't," Remus said warningly.

"But—"

"See her face?" Sirius muttered, dropping his voice so only the other Marauders could hear. "Does she look like she wants to talk to you?"

Now that it had been pointed out to him, James noticed she did look a bit upset. But it couldn't have anything to do with him…

"—so maybe the owl just got a bit, you know, lost?" Mary was saying. She had an arm around Lily's shoulder and was speaking in the same comforting tone James's own friends had just used on him.

"N-no," said Lily. Her voice was shaky and she kept sweeping angrily at her eyes. "She s-sent it back. She h-hates me…"

A searing anger boiled uncomfortably in the pit of James's stomach. Someone had made his Lily cry. That was not to be tolerated.

"Whatever stupid thing you're thinking, you've got eight seconds to do it, Prongs," Remus said, lifting the arm that wasn't restraining James to glance briefly at the watch he had had to reset so often over the last few days.

The watch ticked on. James had only enough time to blink and open his mouth before the day reset itself as well.

"Double dammit," said James sullenly. He scanned the dormitory, decided he didn't like the look of it, and stuck his head under the pillow.

"Prongs, what are you doing?" Remus asked (at least, he thought it was Remus; he couldn't be sure without getting up, and he really didn't want to do that).

"Exactly what it looks like, mostly."

"It looks like you are still in bed being a complete sloth with no intention of getting up for lessons, but that cannot possibly be what you are doing."

"Astoundingly enough, Moony, it is."

"You're joking. Get up."

James didn't move. "No, see, I've put quite a bit of thought into it," he said, which was a lie, "and I have decided not to bother."

"You can't just lie there because Evans—"

"It's nothing to do with Evans," said James, which was an even bigger lie. "It's just that it doesn't, on the whole, actually matter if I get up and go to Charms. Because I've done it already. Four times. And if I don't go, and I get detention, I won't even have time to serve it before I have the exact same Charms lesson to get up and be late for."

"But—" Remus sounded completely baffled. "You can't just—you have to—"

A sigh which James was almost certain belonged to Sirius drifted across the dormitory. "Come on, Prongs," said Sirius, "I want breakfast."

Only because it's you asking, James thought but didn't say.

OoOoOo

After the fourth bit of bacon he'd managed to land in Bertram Aubrey's orange juice without his noticing, James was bored again.

Remus seemed to sense trouble stirring and gave James a warning look. "Please don't do anything—"

An enormous clattering arose from the Slytherin table as nearly a hundred juice-filled goblets floated several feet from their initial positions and abruptly emptied themselves over the head of whichever student they found to be nearest.

"—stupid."

James threw his head back and laughed, though luckily this was rather inconspicuous as practically every member of the other three houses was howling with laughter.

Remus was employing every bit of willpower he had in order to look properly disapproving of this, but when he spotted a particularly aggressive piece of toast repeatedly slamming itself into the head of a fourth year whom he particularly disliked, he had to bury his face in his hands and just hope James wouldn't catch him cracking up. Sirius flicked his wand at Peter to expel the chunk of boiled egg that had lodged itself in his throat while he was laughing, and James immediately redirected it to hit a rather unfortunate Slytherin girl in the back of the head. She didn't seem to notice.

In all fairness, they couldn't really get in trouble for this. Technically.

"Prongs?" Remus said suddenly.

James was quite intent on the havoc he was wreaking, and had to put some effort into dragging his eyes away. "Yes?"

"Why don't we go…have fun?"

James looked positively evil just then. "I thought you never ask."

OoOoOo

It was a fantastic day to be a Marauder, and a terrible day to be anyone else.

After the initial morning fiasco (which, in a building populated with hundreds of underage wizards and rivalries older than every castle resident added together, could not be linked to any one person) they proceeded to Charms in immensely high spirits. James and Sirius switched seats every time Professor Flitwick had turned around for twenty minutes, and when this got boring, switched other people's seats as well. By the end of the period they had moved all the furniture at least once and Flitwick had sent himself to the hospital wing, convinced he was coming down with something.

Remus had rather looked forward to Potions. Slughorn had been making his usual rounds of the classroom and once again given his analysis of Remus's work to the floor rather than to his face, and Remus had said politely (as he'd wanted to for several years), "It's really so much harder to hear you when you're cowering, Professor."

Though it made no noticeable difference, Slughorn drew himself up to his full height.

"What's that, Lupin?"

Remus, pale and sickly though he currently was, struck a much more imposing figure and looked at Slughorn with something halfway between a smirk and a glare. "Well, you see, sound doesn't carry quite as well to students you're too frightened to actually look at, sir, so I'm finding it a bit hard—"

Slughorn had already turned five separate shades of red before he finally managed to splutter, "Get out—get out of my class—go to—head of house—NOW!"

Remus still wore the same befuddling grin. "Of course. Never was worth bothering with since you learned about my condition, was I?" And with a decidedly wolfish grin, he slipped out into the hall.

Slughorn smoothed what was left of his straw-colored hair and straightened his robes. "Now, if there are no further interruptions—"

James, Sirius and Peter were already out of their seats. "Don't think we can stay, Professor," James said cheerfully. "Things to do, you understand."

Slughorn was now confused as well as furious. Two of his best students (and that other boy) were suddenly leaving his classroom as though this would not be a problem for him. This was a serious loss of control.

"Potter! Black!" He paused. He could never seem to remember the other one's name. "Er…Peterman! Get back here!"

"It's Pettigrew," Peter snapped, glowing red with embarrassment but looking very serious. "And—and I've always thought you were a complete arse, by the way."

Remus was waiting for them just outside the door.

"We left in protest," Sirius said.

"I heard," said Remus. He still looked a little shaky. "That was…I feel so much better now."

James laughed at this. "'Course you do, mate."

"I can't believe I said that to a teacher. I…I'm a prefect…"

"Prefect or not, that's fun, you know it is. And we can't even get in trouble for—Moony? Moony!"

Remus heard this as if from very far away. There was a sickly roaring in his ears, and he could feel himself rapidly approaching the place where his mind and body ceased to be anything that even remotely resembled Remus Lupin.

The hallway is a terrible place to turn into a werewolf, he thought, and then he thought nothing at all.