Hi hi guys! Here's another chapter :D For once, I actually don't have a lot to talk about because there hasn't really been any news. So I'm just going to do some shameless plugs and then reply to reviews :D
DO YOU LIKE RP? Because I totally love RP. Currently I'm involved in an 'anything is possible' Marauder's era tumblr roleplay where I'm playing Sirius. The main blog is foundationsrp on tumblr, and we're still missing quite a few vital characters such as Remus and Snape. I would love to have a Remus to rp with so you should totally check it out and maybe apply :D
Kam, I always love reading your reviews, they're so nice ^^ I can't wait for you to be able to read more of the story, because I always wonder what your reaction will be XD And don't worry. It won't feel like I'm taking a break to you because I'll still be uploading on the regular schedule. I just won't be actively writing behind the scenes. You won't even know I'm gone :)
patronusesandpotions, your detective skills are on point. But Remus/Sirius won't be happening officially for a long while XD I hope you're willing to hang on for the long haul :D
Alright guys, that's it for me. See you in two weeks :D Love ya!
~SXS
FOR WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMER, SEE FIRST CHAPTER AN.
It was a couple of weeks before Remus and Anajnette came up with any results. They laid the book on the table in the library where Sirius, James, and Peter were sitting. It was open to the page with the potion they had discovered.
"This is what we could find. It's not exactly what you wanted because you can't choose the animal. It changes into whatever your inner animal is," Remus explained.
"Inner animal?" James asked.
"The animal you would become if you became an Animagus."
"I guess that's okay. I'm sure that Snivellus's inner animal is a slug or a snake or something gross," Sirius said. "Anjanette, do you think that you can charm his hair into a different color once it changes shape?"
"Guess so. What color?"
"Slimy green!" Peter chimed in.
"Might as well throw in some silver too since those are his House colors," James said. "He'll be a shining beacon of exactly what they all are."
"James, are you sure you want to do this?" Anjanette asked. Sirius had told her that he wanted to prank him as well (he hadn't told Peter because he didn't want to risk him spilling the beans). She thought that she might as well give him a chance to change his mind before he was the butt of the joke himself. "Severus never did anything to you."
"Anjanette, Anjanette," James said shaking his head. He got up and walked around the table to put an arm around her shoulders. She gave him a sideways look. "You, being a Ravenclaw, wouldn't understand, but Gryffindors and Slytherins have a reputation to uphold as eternal rivals. Therefore, we must prank them if we are able. Besides, dear old Snivellus is a threat to the girl I love and as a noble Gryffindor I must act."
At the last sentence, he stood up straight and puffed out his chest proudly. There were a few other people at surrounding tables who heard this and looked at the messy-haired boy with wary expressions.
"Mate, you've only known her for a few months and she doesn't even like you," Sirius said. "How are you in love with her?"
James's chest deflated. "You wouldn't understand. She'll come around eventually."
"How many times have we heard that?" Remus asked under his breath and Sirius and Peter snickered.
Anjanette's lips twitched up on one side. "Can't say I didn't try," she said. James looked at her with a quirked eyebrow, which was quickly becoming a habit. Remus and Sirius shared a stealthy grin.
"The potion is going to take about two weeks to brew," Remus said. "And there are some ingredients that we don't have in our stores."
James peered into the book and read the ingredient list. "Merlin, this looks like a fifth year level potion! How are you with brewing, Anjanette?"
"Absolutely dreadful," she said. "Slughorn says that if I don't improve by the summer I'll have to take remedial next year."
"Ouch," Peter said. "I'd hate to be stuck in a class of first years if I were a second year."
"We can help you if you like," Remus offered.
"There's no point. It's not the theory I have a problem with, it's the brewing. Which you can't help me with because we're not in the same class. I'll just have to take it again," Anjanette said with a sigh and rubbed her eyes.
"I think that's the most I've ever heard you say," Sirius commented. She just shrugged in response, obviously not wanting to add to her word count. He looked down at the book himself. "I don't think we'll have too much of a problem brewing the potion ourselves. I'd like to think I'm pretty decent."
"If we can get the ingredients before the end of this week we can finish it by Valentines Day," Remus said.
"Perfect! Then when Evans sees how hideous Snivellus looks with his hair all sluggish, she'll come running into my arms." James clasped his hands together and looked off into the distance, daydreaming.
"I highly doubt that, James," Remus said. "But either way we need the ingredients first. How are we going to do it?"
"Someone will go with me under the cloak obviously. We'll sneak into Slughorn's extra stores while the others distract him." Remus could almost see the cogs working in James's brain as his plan was coming together. "And we can probably brew the thing in our dorm since no one else goes up there."
"Stealing ingredients?" Remus said. "That doesn't seem like such a good idea."
"Come on, Remus. It's not stealing it's..." Sirius put a finger to his chin trying to find the right way to explain. "It's like Robin Hood. We're taking from the rich, in ingredients that is, and giving to the poor, which is us."
"So you're men in tights," Anjanette deadpanned and the boys laughed.
"I want to go under the cloak with James!" Peter said raising a hand.
"Alright, alright, settle down, Pete. Then Remus and Sirius, you'll distract him." The other boys nodded. "We'll probably be able to get away with it during class if you can come up with something to keep him completely focused on you. If he's distracted enough he won't even notice us disappearing."
"We'll give it all we've got," Sirius said. "This is so going to be worth it." His enthusiasm only made James more eager to go through with the plan as soon as possible. Little did he know that he was also fueling his own downfall.
.:~I~S~S~:.
The next morning in Potions, the boys had decided that they would execute their plan. If Remus and Sirius could get Professor Slughorn completely focused on them, James and Peter would slip under the cloak and go at the stores. If not, they would try after class.
Sirius had a good feeling that they'd have no trouble distracting him.
When there was still about half an hour left of the lesson, the pureblood nudged Remus and gave him a subtle nod. It was time.
"Professor?" Remus raised his hand to get Slughorn's attention.
"Yes, my boy. What seems to be the problem?" The portly man stepped over to their table towards the back of the room. They had distinctly picked this location and James and Peter had stayed toward the front so that when their professor's back was turned, he wouldn't be able to see them vanishing.
"Uh..." Normally so quick to come up with lies, Remus found himself at a loss.
"Is this the right color?" Sirius asked quickly.
"Well, let me have a closer look here." Slughorn bent over the cauldron and began muttering to himself. "It looks fine to me, gentlemen. Keep up the good work."
"Wait! Wh-when it says crush these roots-" Sirius started, holding up the book to him.
"It says cut, Mr. Black. If you were to crush those and add them to your potion then it could cause an explosion. You didn't crush them, did you?" Slughorn looked worriedly at their bubbling cauldron then.
"I told you that you need reading glasses," Remus said, playing along.
"I thought it was just the lighting."
"Oh dear. This could be quite disastrous. Let me just go get a few ingredients so maybe I can counteract it before it's too late." He started to turn back towards the front of the room.
"NO!" both boys cried at once. Slughorn looked at them suspiciously and Sirius was the first to speak. "I mean, why don't I get them? This way you can keep a watch just in case it starts to react while I'm gone. What did you need then, sir?"
Slughorn blinked down at the pair with a little frown. "Some newt eyes and salamander saliva should do for now." But as he was saying this, the cauldron started to bubble even more and before anyone could make a move, it had exploded. The loud noise drew all attention in the room to its source, and James and Peter took the opportunity to duck under the cloak.
The exploded potion had splattered Slughorn, Remus, and Sirius. The professor brought a hand up to his face and slowly swiped the brownish goop off from forehead to chin. "You're lucky, Mr. Black, that you hadn't yet added the willow bark, or all our faces might have been melted off."
"I'm so sorry professor," Sirius said, but he was looking past him to the empty desk of James and Peter.
"Yes, well, just make sure you get those eyes checked. I'll just do a cleaning charm then." Slughorn pulled out his wand and cast a few spells that sopped up the ruined potion. Sirius and Remus continued to watch for the reappearance of their friends. When they were nearly clean, James and Peter's heads seemed to poke up from the air, and they gave the thumbs up.
"Thankfully this was a minor explosion. Merlin only knows we don't need another remodeling…" With one last flick of his wand, all the potion was gone. "Alright then. You two will just have to write an essay about this potion instead. Twelve inches."
"Yes, sir," both of them said as Slughorn returned to his desk.
As he walked away, Remus turned to his friend with an expression of wonder. "That was kind of...exhilarating," he said breathlessly. Sirius just laughed and patted him on the back.
"Get used to it, Remy. This won't be the Robin Hoods' last raid on old Sluggy, I'm sure." He pointed into the air triumphantly. "All for one and one for all!"
"That's the Three Musketeers, Sirius," Remus corrected.
"Ah well...they're all men in tights."
.:~I~S~S~:.
Remus found that there were more advantages to Sirius knowing about his lycanthropy than he had expected. Besides the fact that he now had someone at school besides the teachers who he didn't have to make excuses to, he also had someone who could help him come up with those excuses for everyone else. Which was why, with the coming full moon at the end of January, Sirius had devised a good cover for him to use on James and Peter. In the last few hours before the moon rose, while the boys were all up in their dorm, Remus suddenly doubled over as if in pain.
"Oh...my stomach!" he cried. In reality, his stomach was bothering him, but not to that extent, and not because of a silly virus. I wish.
"What's wrong?" James asked.
"I don't kn-know. All of the sudden I feel...Oh Merlin!" Remus jumped up and ran to the bathroom, making some of the most believable vomit noises that Sirius had ever heard. He had tried many times to sound as though he were throwing up to avoid days with his relatives, but his mother never believed him. Maybe he could somehow make some kind of recording of Remus's noises for next time.
"Oh...J-J-James, I don't like vomiting! N-n-not at all!" Peter said, looking a little green himself from listening to Remus.
"I'm not too good with it myself," James said, looking warily at the bathroom door. Remus returned to his bed and laid down. He even had a bit of what looked like leftover vomit around his lips. The shaking had started and Sirius thought that it only added to the effect.
James and Peter had backed up to their headboards trying to get as far from Remus as they could. "Uh, Remus? Maybe you should go down to the hospital wing. See what Madam Pomphrey can do for you," James suggested.
Remus lifted his head weakly and said, "C-c-can you t-t-take me?"
"W-well, I would but...I mean I'm rather tired..." Remus looked across to Sirius on the other bed and the faintest of grins appeared on his face. Their plan was working perfectly.
"Don't worry, Remy. I'll take you, since I'm not a big baby," Sirius said. James, for once, didn't mind the teasing.
Sirius got up and helped Remus out of the bed. The shaking only got worse when he stood, and he leaned his full weight onto Sirius. As he half-carried the werewolf across the room, he noticed Peter almost turning blue, as though he were trying not to breathe.
Once out of the dorm and common room, Sirius said, "Nice acting, mate. How'd you learn to make that sound?"
"M-M-Mum," Remus stuttered, unable to say much more.
"And this?" Sirius swiped a finger at the sticky brownish stuff around his lips.
"P-p-porridge."
Sirius gasped. "Remus! Using the sacred breakfast cereal in such a way. You should be ashamed of yourself!" But he grinned nevertheless, which caused Remus to also smile weakly.
"S-S-Siri?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank y-y-you."
They made it to the hospital wing uninterrupted, and when Madam Pomfrey asked what he was doing there, Sirius told her that he knew about Remus's 'condition'. She looked taken aback at first, then her expression turned fond, almost admiring. "You shouldn't be out of bed this late though," she gently chided. "You don't want Filch to catch you. Now hurry up and get back to bed." Sirius knew she was right, but cast one last lingering glance at Remus before the Healer had shut the door, leaving him with no choice but to go back to the Tower.
When he got back to his room, he found that James and Peter were still awake. "How is he?" the latter asked.
"He's fine. Madam Pomfrey said he probably ate something funny, but she wanted to keep him overnight anyway," Sirius replied, giving the scripted answer they had come up with before.
"Oh...That's good. So it's not contagious." Peter sighed in relief.
"I wouldn't let my guard down, Pete," Sirius said. "You never know. I might just...Oh...I feel like I might..." He ran into the bathroom and Peter actually shrieked in horror. But he came out just as quickly, laughing at his friend's fear. Even James was laughing a little, though he still looked uncertain.
"Lighten up, you two. It's just vomit. Cast a cleaning charm on the toilet, open the windows, you'll be fine." It was even funnier knowing that Remus hadn't even been sick in the first place.
Sirius laid back in his bed, ready to go to sleep, when James suddenly said, "You know, you two are strange." He peered across the room in question, and the other boy clarified, "You and Remus. Even though we're all friends now, you still have your own thing going on."
"What do you mean?" Sirius asked, confused at the way the conversation had suddenly turned.
"I don't know. Like you look at each other sometimes like you've got some secret. And you have nicknames for each other. And you just...I can't describe it. It's weird." James's brow furrowed as he tried to think about how to word his thoughts. Peter was nodding along too, this time not just for the sake of agreeing.
"Are you jealous? I can give you a nickname too. How about Jamsie?" Sirius waggled his eyebrows at him.
James grimaced. "Um, no thanks."
The other pureblood laughed, but then looked at James more seriously. "Honestly, though…he's my best mate. No offense, but he was nice to me from the beginning. We've only been friends for a few weeks, so it makes sense that our relationship is different."
James seemed to ponder this for a moment before shrugging. "I guess you're right." They didn't discuss it any further, and the messy-haired boy went into the bathroom to cast the cleaning charm.
As Sirius settled back again, he thought about what James had said. He did have to admit that he felt closer to Remus than the other two, but he hadn't realized that it was so obvious. But why shouldn't it be? After all they had shared in just the few months they knew each other, it was only logical that they would have a stronger bond (though only the two of them knew just how much they shared). He and James and Peter just weren't at that level yet, but that didn't mean that they wouldn't be. They just needed more time.
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about Remus alone in the Shrieking Shack, suffering through the transformation. But try as he might, he couldn't help believing that he was hearing howling as he drifted off to sleep.
.:~I~S~S~:.
The potion brewing went smoothly over the next few weeks, and as Remus had predicted, it was finished a few days before Valentines Day. The boys agreed (though it was mostly James who insisted) to wait to pull their prank during breakfast on the holiday.
Anjanette, being the least suspicious of them all, was the one elected to slip the potion to Severus. As he was eating with Lily at the Gryffindor table that morning, it made it all the easier. Meanwhile, Remus waited for Sirius to give him the signal to drop the potion into James's drink.
The Ravenclaw walked over to the pair nonchalantly. Lily and Severus were in the middle of a conversation when she arrived and Severus looked up with a sneer. "Can I help you?"
"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said, moving in between them. She swept out an arm as if to put it down on the table and as her sleeve passed over Severus's cup, she poured half of the vile in, then rested her hand next to his plate. It was such a fluid movement that neither he nor Lily noticed. "Lily is it?"
The red-head raised an equally ruby brow. "Yes?"
"I was just wondering if you could tell me what the Charms homework was? I would have asked James or Sirius but you know how they are," she lied smoothly.
"Ah, well, I don't recall having any specific homework other than practicing for the exam," Lily said, eyes narrowing slightly.
"Oh. Alright. Thank you then." Anjanette stood, dropping the rest of the potion into Severus's cup as her hand passed over it again, and returned to her table.
The Gryffindor boys, knowing the job was done, watched intently to see the results of Severus drinking the potion. It was a few moments before he picked up his goblet again, but when he did, the effects were instantaneous.
Severus's greasy hair started to wiggle, then slowly it rose into the air. Lily screamed and backed away from him. He stood from the table and touched his hair, unable to do anything else. The black locks grew and started to take shape. But as it grew into something recognizable, it seemed it wouldn't become the animal the boys had expected.
When Severus's hair finally stopped transforming, it looked as though it were in the shape of a large black panther's head. It was less funny and instead fierce. James's mouth fell open in shock. "That can't be right!" Sirius nodded to Remus and while their friend was distracted he poured the potion into his cup. "This potion must have been done wrong. I knew we added too many drops of hag mucus."
"Hey, you never know. Maybe he's a lot more ferocious on the inside than he looks," Remus said.
"Well, I feel gypped. People are actually admiring him!" And it was true. Students from all the House tables were looking at Severus's new 'do' in awe. It was only made worse by the fact that Anjanette decided to go through with changing it to silver and green like they had originally planned. The students 'ooh'd and 'ahhh'd.
James, pouting at the plan gone wrong, took a sip of his drink. "Weird. This tastes different." Then he took another sip, and another, trying to figure out why it seemed to have changed. "That's really...What's so funny?"
Remus and Sirius couldn't hold back their laughter anymore. In the next second, James's hair started to act the same as Severus's had. However, instead of turning into the whole head of his inner animal, he was left with some misshapen antlers. A second later, Anjanette had cast the color changing charm, turning one red and one gold.
"What the-? You dirty gits!" he cried, feeling the solid new style of his hair. Sirius and Remus, and Peter who was just now understanding what had happened, only laughed harder.
Severus and Lily came over at that moment, the former walking with much more confidence than anyone had seen him have before. He showed a rare smile, black eyes glinting. "So, I suppose this just reflects your ego perfectly, eh, Potter?"
"Shut up, Snivellus! This wasn't supposed to happen!"
Lily was giggling behind her hand. She looked to Remus and Sirius and gave them a little smile and a nod, which they returned.
James grabbed Sirius by the collar of his shirt. "Fix it."
"Alright. We'll start brewing the antidote tomorrow," Sirius teased.
"NOW!"
.:~I~S~S~:.
Sirius skipped out on Potions that morning to do what he called 'personal study', which was really brewing the antidote for James. Remus reminded him to give a vial to Lily to pass onto Severus. Severus, however, wore the hairstyle for the rest of the day, garnering some admiration for once, and causing James to pout silently.
"I warned you," Anjanette said to him later in the day when she and the boys had congregated in the library.
James's mouth dropped open. "You did not!"
"I asked if you were sure you wanted to go through with it. I'd call this bad karma," she said with a tiny smirk.
"No, I'd call this bad friends. I'm not speaking to you two," he said, pointing at Remus and Sirius who just grinned even wider. "And I want that line back in our room. I should have known you couldn't be trusted."
"Hey, at least I brewed you the antidote!"
"Come on, James. It's all in good fun. You can't say that you didn't deserve it a little," Remus said.
Again James looked shocked. "What did I do to deserve that?"
"Well," Peter said shyly. "You were a bit rotten in the beginning of term."
"That's an under-exaggeration," Sirius said. "He was a bloody twat."
"Seconded," Remus agreed.
"Third," Anjanette said.
"Alright, alright!" James waved his hands in front of himself and couldn't help a little smile. "So I was a bit mean, but this was just overkill. I'll get you back for this, Sirius. You've just started yourself a prank war!"
With a mischievous gleam in his eyes, Sirius motioned him to, "Bring it on, Jamsie!"
