A/N: Thanks to everyone who read Chapter One! You have no idea how much it means to me, you guys! Luv you all! Enjoy Chapter Two!

CHAPTER TWO:

Odd Professors, Drunk Monkeys, and Other Things I See Every Day

"Hand me that book, would you?"

Sirius smirked at her as he easily reached up and grabbed the book from the top shelf. He handed it to Natalia in a patronizingly superior air. Natalia rolled her eyes as she snatched the book from his hands and plopped down on the floor. Sirius crouched down beside her.

"An unpretentious thank-you would suffice, you know," he stated, looking disdainfully down at her.

"I don't like thanking people who use big words to degrade other people," she stuck out her tongue. They were in the more secluded part of the library, which was right beside the Restricted Section. It was Natalia's favorite part of the library because it was so out-of-the-way.

"What are you looking for, anyhow?" asked Sirius curiously. He had tagged along with her after he'd given Peter the slip. Wormtail was a great mate and all, but he really needed to quit following him like a lost puppy.

"A book on Elfish script," she furrowed her eyebrows as she flipped through the pages. Sirius raised his eyebrows but said nothing, glancing absentmindedly about. Shelves and shelves of books lay in the library, the room was silent, except for the occasional page crinkling from Natalia. Sirius bet that if he made a loud noise, Madam Pince would be at him in an instant.

"Perfect," Natalia got up and slammed the book shut. A loud bang echoed through the library. Almost immediately, Madam Pince was glaring down at her, her eyes boring into Natalia's, confirming Sirius' theory.

"Quiet in the library," she screeched, not bothering to lower own her voice. Pince's expression was enough to convince Muggle children of the existence of the bogeyman.

Natalia held her book up. "I'd like to borrow this," she answered innocently, giving Madam Pince an angelic smile. Madam Pince eyed her warily as she and Natalia made their way to the front desk, with Sirius walking behind them, still looking curiously around the library.

"We could sneak through this way..."

"No way, she'll see us!"

"How are we going to hide it?"

"Could we go in our forms..."

"That's complete rubbish, Wormtail, if we get caught, we'll be expelled for sure!"

"What are you boys going on about?" Natalia entered the common room, looking at the four boys sitting in a lonely corner, crowding over a piece of paper.3

"Nothing," Sirius said quickly, conveniently covering the mysterious piece of paper when he turned around. James mumbled a spell under his breath and the parchment disappeared.

"Absolutely nothing at all," Remus added. He summoned his book and began to read as though absorbed into it. Peter stood there, his mouth in an 'O' shape and his eyes wide, as though he had been caught doing something bad.

Natalia raised her eyebrows suspiciously. Putting her hands on her hips, she said, "You know I'm going to find out. One way or another, I will discover what you're doing!" and she dramatically marched off into the dorms.

Peter glanced at his friends worriedly. "You think she will?"

"Fat chance, I know how Nat is about privacy," Sirius said confidently. James nodded his head in agreement.

"We'll plan some other time, right now -" he grinned at Sirius. Sirius grinned back and glanced at his watch.

"Any second now... in five, four, three, two, one..."

Natalia suddenly stood in front of them, her face steaming. In her hands was a box of what seemed to be Honeydukes chocolates.

"You have a wonderful habit of suddenly appearing in front of people, you know that?" Sirius said, grinning.

"What... is in this box?" she said angrily, but Sirius could see her lips slightly twitching.

"You shouldn't eat things that aren't yours," said Remus, smiling pleasantly.

"It was addressed to me!" Natalia snapped, showing them a piece of parchment on the box. Coincidentally enough, it was labeled 'For Nat.'

"And you just eat it?" gasped Sirius, looking shocked, "Aren't you afraid that some lovestruck chap's spiked it with love potion, perhaps? Very likely, in your case."

"What the bloody hell is in this damned chocolate?" came a most eloquent retort.

"Oh you know..." James trailed off, smirking.

"A bit of moldy toadstools,"

"Some spider legs,"

"Oh, and lots and lots of," Peter added.

"Frog urine," came Sirius' bark-like laugh.

"All put together in a lovely chocolate-covered delight," Remus chuckled. He and the others toppled over each other, laughing and hooting. Natalia stood, debating whether to stay mad, or to join in their laughter. Before she could decide, Lily came into the common room.

"What is going on here?" she asked, staring at the group of boys, who were still laughing.

Natalia shrugged, and then grinned, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Here, Lily," she spoke loudly, "have a chocolate. It's ace," she smirked as the boys suddenly stopped their laughing and stared. A distinguished red flush came onto James' cheeks.

Lily gave Natalia an odd look, but took the chocolate, nonetheless. She put the chocolate into her mouth and chewed slowly, before spitting it out, her face turning slightly green.

"God, what's in this?" she spat, gagging.

"Why don't you ask them?" Natalia replied quickly, before running up the dorms to stifle her laughs. Lily turned to all the boys, who shared matching innocent faces.

She held up the box of chocolates. "What is this?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Oh, you know..."

"A bit of this, a bit of that..."

"Mix 'em together..."

"All in a chocolate-covered delight."

"Quidditch tryouts next Saturday!"

James came bursting into breakfast. He turned to Natalia. "Be there."

"What day is that, the seventeenth of September?" Natalia glanced at her watch, "I don't know Potter, maybe I should back out of Quidditch this year," she sighed.

James' hazel eyes darkened. His glare became so fierce that Natalia held up her hands.

"I was joking! Honestly," she said, sticking out her tongue.

James let out a huge sigh, but his face remained stern. "Good. You're the best Seeker we have. Seven o'clock, Quidditch pitch," and he ran off to tell the previous teammates from last year.

"Merlin. Make a man a Quidditch captain, and all forms of humor goes out the window," Natalia shook her head as she spooned some porridge.

Remus laughed. "Nothing comes between Prongs and his Quidditch," he said.

"He's almost as bad as that Patrick Wood, the one who graduated when I was in third year," she grumbled.

"Oh, did you hear? He and Daisy McCoy are married," Lily said, sipping her coffee. Natalia spat out her porridge.

"What? Daisy 'Sign-the-Petition-to-stop-Quidditch' McCoy? Daisy hates Quidditch, almost as much as Lily hates James!" she gave a side glance at Lily.

Lily turned slightly pink.

"Yeah well, they got married two years after they graduated from Hogwarts. Think they've got a son as well," Sirius said as he snickered at Natalia's analogy.

"Crazy world," Natalia muttered, wiping the spilt porridge with her napkin.

"It's part of the dare, now go!" Sirius nudged her. Natalia pouted. James pushed her into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. Inside, the new teacher, Professor Deboale, was starting to take attendance.

"Barclay, Maureen?" a girl raised her hand. Professor Deboale nodded at her, then peered down at the list.

"Erm... Longstocking, Pippi?" he said unsurely.

Natalia waved her arms frantically in the air. "Oh, me! I'm here, I'm here! It's me, I'm Pippi!" she squealed, bouncing up and down. Deboale stared at her, adjusting his glasses.

"Erm... carrying on then..."

"Great name, Moony," Sirius whispered as he spied from behind the door.

"I give credit to Astrid Lindgren," Remus grinned. James put a finger to his lips, motioning them to listen.

"Erm, as you know, I am the new Professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts," the thin teacher said nervously, leaning on his desk, "and we have a lot to cover in this second-year class so..." a hand rose up as he spoke.

"Yes, erm... Miss Longstocking?"

"When will we get to the part where we get to fight live Hungarian Horntails?" Natalia asked excitedly, flicking back her blond (Oh, the wonders of Polyjuice Potion) pigtails.

Professor Deboale cleared his throat; a few students snickered.

"Actually, we will not be doing that, but, this year, we will be covering," - he took out his lesson plan - "erm, different magical creatures, and er, I don't think we will be dueling dragons, not even in N.E.W.T.s," he cleared his throat again.

Natalia raised her hand up again.

"Then will we start breeding centaurs in the classroom?"

"Erm, centaurs are actually independent creatures and ..."

"What are you boys doing?" Lily had her arms crossed. The boys looked at her, looking slightly guilty. James led her over, pointing his finger at a pigtailed girl who wouldn't stop bombarding strange questions at the new professor.

"Is this how you spend your free periods?" reproved Lily, scowling, "that's really cruel, considering he's new. Honestly, how could you be so inconsiderate?" but she made no move to get up as Natalia raised her hand again.

"Professor Deboale, is it true that Dumbledore's beard is actually detachable?"

The look on Professor Deboale's face was absolutely priceless.

Natalia waved her hand in front of his face.

"Siiiirius! Are you there?"

"What?" Sirius mumbled, his gray eyes glazing over. He had dozed off in Ancient Runes, blinking his eyes.

"Oi!" Natalia slapped him on the back. Sirius snapped back up, looking attentive. "We're supposed to be translating these runes!"

She showed him the tablet and the blank parchment. Sirius pushed his thoughts out of his head and looked at the tablet critically.

"Dunno, just make something up."

"Looks more like Ancient Egyptian scribes wrote it," Natalia said, ignoring Sirius' unhelpful suggestion. A few minutes later, Natalia had deciphered the entire tablet by herself, while Sirius sat there, looking elegantly bored. He had taken out a piece of old parchment and was looking at it blankly.

"I'm done," Natalia said, putting down her quill, "and what is that?" she pointed at the parchment Sirius was holding.

"Something I got back in fifth year," he said casually, yet holding the paper up so she couldn't clearly see it.

A parchment, rolled up and bound neatly, lay in the centre of Sirius' pillow. Sirius picked it up and unrolled it, reading its contents carefully. Written on the parchment in beautiful, curvy writing, were the very instructions that he and James had been searching for two years: How to become an Animagus, The instructions were written basically and straight-forward, and was the prime reason of how James, Peter, and Sirius were able to become Animigi. There was no evidence of who had given him the parchment, or of how they found out what James and Sirius were doing, except for one clue. The writer had messily scribbled the initials, 'N.L.'

Natalia reached over him and grabbed the parchment away from him.

"Ah, this," she said, grinning as she recognized her own writing. "I remember when you guys stole that from me."

Sirius smiled sheepishly.

"How on earth did you do it, I don't know," Natalia remarked, shaking her head affectionately. "When's the next full moon anyway?"

"Next Tuesday. You'll be sitting on my head again, Feather?"

Natalia whacked him on the head with the rolled up parchment before handing it back to him. "You're impossible to please, Padfoot."

"Potions is a bloody pain in the arse," Natalia grumbled the next day at lunch.

Behind her, Sirius, Remus and Peter were busy stifling laughs.

"Well, if you didn't send Slughorn to the hospital last week with that exploding potion," Lily scolded, "he'd probably be a bit nicer to you."

"Oh no, I'm fine with Slughorn," Natalia replied, downing a goblet of pumpkin juice, "he's still in St. Mungo's. We had a substitute, Professor Weeny," she griped.

"Bit of a second-year insult, isn't it?" James laughed.

"No, that's the professor's name. Weeny," Sirius said through choked laughs.

Natalia sighed. "Wish I knew that beforehand," she mused.

"Why, what happened?"

"Nat started rolling over laughing, as he made his introductions," Remus smiled.

"I thought he was joking!" Natalia protested, "and anyway, you could have told me that it was his real name!"

"We didn't want to ruin our fun," Sirius smirked.

Lily raised her eyebrow. "Is that all that happened?"

Sirius chuckled. " 'Course not. After that, Professor Weeny didn't really take a liking to Feather, to our great surprise, and hounded her all class. Because of that, she slipped in a couple of wrong ingredients and set Professor Weeny's goatee on fire."

Peter choked on his black pudding, laughing at the memory. Natalia slapped him on the back a couple of times, trying to force it out.

"He took off twenty points and gave her detention for 'cheek'," Remus continued on.

"There he is!" Natalia pointed him out. He was sitting at the High Table, near the Slytherin table. Natalia scanned him, noticing that he actually looked better without his goatee. He caught her eye and glared at her. She waved cheerfully back.

"Oi, who's that new girl sitting at the Slytherin table? I've never seen her before," James asked, pointing.

Sitting at the Slytherin table, was a strange girl with wavy blonde locks and a pointed nose. She was quite pretty, but the snobbish look of her face gave Natalia the impression that she might be a pureblood, and proud of it. The strange girl noticed the Gryffindors staring at her curiously, so she got up from her seat and walked up to them confidently.

"Hello," she said coolly, "if you didn't know, staring is quite rude."

"My name's James Potter," he replied, sticking out his hand, "are you new here?" he asked, noticing that there was no crest on her robes.

The girl crossed her arms, snubbing James' handshake. "Azoturia Lorenzo. I've just transferred." At the sound of her name, Natalia snorted into her rice pudding, creating a nice mess on the table.

The girl whipped her head to Natalia's direction. "Something funny about my name?" she demanded.

Natalia nodded boldly, to Lily's horror, and began laughing, unable to speak.

The girl gave her a piercing stare, one that Natalia could not return, as she was too busy laughing. Sirius bit back a smile, because only he knew why she was laughing.

"My name's Lily Evans," Lily said, nodding at her, giving only a half apologetic look. Natalia was being somewhat impolite, but after all, the girl also seemed slightly rude.

The girl sneered. "So this is 'Mudblood-most-likely-to-succeed'," she said coldly, "Filthy Mudbloods, its a wonder how you're all still at Hogwarts."

She turned to James, Remus, Peter, Natalia and Sirius, "and I suppose these must be the rest of the Muggle-loving -"

"Petrificus Totalus."

Azoturia's body went suddenly rigid, as she clattered noisily on the floor. Natalia calmly went back to her eating.

"We always think that we have to listen people's insults, but we actually don't," she said, "A good spell will just shut them up."

"Where are we going?"

"Common room," answered Natalia, avoiding the trick step on the staircase, "I want to get my broom and practice before tryouts."

"What, that poor excuse for a - oof!"

She laughed, as Sirius lay stuck in the trick step. His face was red and not very attractive.

"Yes, that poor excuse for a broom," she said as she pulled Sirius up, "you're lucky none of your fan girls saw you, or they'd be shocked for life."

"Speak of the devil," Sirius muttered as he nodded his head towards the Fat Lady portrait. A group of girls were standing, gossiping vibrantly and doing their makeup. The leader of them was Shara Robertson.

Shara shared a dorm with Natalia and Lily, but they were far from friends. She and her group of friends would do all things imaginable to aggravate them, which Natalia only saw as a challenge. Barclay had long brown, luxurious curls and hazel eyes that were often covered with eye shadow and mascara, with lips that were smothered in lipstick or lip gloss. She was quite tall, though not as tall as Sirius, reaching at about five foot and ten inches.

"You know, Robertson would be quite pretty, if she'd get rid of the makeup, button her shirt, lengthen her skirt, stopped acting so snotty and obsessed and overall behaved less like a drunk monkey," Natalia said, ticking the points off with her fingers.

"You know, maybe they aren't that bad, I mean, they haven't been bothering you all that..."

"Yesterday I earned six Galleons from auctioning off one of your pairs of pink boxer shorts I found in your room," Natalia smirked at Sirius revolted expression.

"Well," Sirius recovered with a smug look, "Seems as though everyone wants a piece of Sirius Black. But as much as the attention is appreciated, I do not wear pink boxer shorts." Sirius proceeded to go down the stairs, but Natalia held him back.

"My broom!" she said, "You go over there and do your... whatever, and I'll be back," she told him as she nearly dragged him across the floor.

Sirius sighed. "Only for you, Feather," he muttered, before combing back a few loose dark locks and rolling his eyes. He sauntered towards the portrait confidently, quickly gaining the attention of the girls. He winked at them and they broke out in fits of giggles. Among them seemed to be the leader, with her large bottom and bosom.

"Eeek! It's Sirius Black!" Robertson squealed, throwing herself onto the boy.

However, she wasn't the lightest of people, in contrast to Natalia, and Sirius had to struggle to keep himself from falling over.

"Hullo - Shara," Sirius grunted, before throwing her off of him. But Robertson didn't seem upset as she jumped up and kissed Sirius right smack on the lips.

At first Sirius tried to struggle, his eyes wide open with disgust and shock, but as her brown hair seemed to gracefully flow, cradling her face, he slowly gave in. All the fangirls were screaming at the two snogging; mostly of glee and with a hint of jealousy.

"Bit eager, aren't we there?" Natalia suddenly said, looking disgusted, yet amused. Sirius could have sworn she even sounded angry. Sirius immediately snapped to his senses and thrust Shara off of him. Natalia raised an eyebrow at him, which meant that they would be talking about this later.

Offended, Robertson smoothed down her brown hair and straightened her skirt before she headed down to the sixth floor, but not before she and her girls all glared at Natalia. One girl with a long blonde mane, however, gave her a shy thumbs-up before she also scurried away

Natalia tapped her foot on the ground, her arms crossed.

"What was that all about?"

"I... really have no idea," Sirius stammered, "she came onto me, and I don't know."

"Well, Mister Drunk Monkey," Natalia patted his head, "if you feel deprived of action, many girls would help you with your needs. Shara Robertson is bordering on losing your integrity, though," she smirked as she whisked off.

Sirius watched her, shaking his head from confusion, and followed her, resulting in a race between man and broom, laughing as he chased his friend.

Chapter End Notes: Well! Another Chapter gone and passed (*sigh*). I know a lot of these introductions are odd but they'll become clear later. Romance (*squeals*) comes in later chapters. I thrive on reviews.

Luv,

ArcanusRose