All the young dudes

Chapter 3: Transformer

"'Furry little problem'?" said Lily Evans. She gave James her usual disapproving look. "What're you lot up to now?"

"Nothing!" James said quickly. "It's— er—"

He turned to Remus, who was busy pretending James didn't exist. Traitor.

"Well, if you must know," James said, "it's Remus' rabbit."

She raised her eyebrows. "His...rabbit?"

Out of the corner of his eye James saw Remus shooting him a look that communicated shut up you idiot. He raked a hand through his hair and kept talking. "Yeah. He nicked him from Professor McGonagall's office to save him being transfigured into a music box."

"Huh." Lily leaned forward to address Remus. "That was very brave of you."

"I mean, I helped," James said. His hand went to his hair without his telling it to. "I helped quite a bit, ran the operation— whole thing was my idea, actually—"

Remus cleared his throat.

"Er, anyway," James said. "He's causing us problems because, y'know, we aren't allowed rabbits at school so we have to keep him hidden in our room and all..."

Lily's smile was directed at Remus and not James. "What's his name?" she asked.

"Er," Remus said. "Prometheus. He's very cute."

And then she messed everything up.

"You didn't have to say yes," Peter says.

It's afternoon now. James fast-walks down the corridor instead of taking it at a run, in order to avoid suspicion. Suspicion will be easy enough to come by as it is, since he's clutching a squirming rabbit in his arms.

"She said she wanted to see the rabbit! What was I supposed to say?"

"'No'," Remus says. "'No' is what you were supposed to say."

"I can't believe we stole from a teacher's office," Peter says, the unbearable whinger.

"Your commitment to impressing Lily Evans is going to get us expelled one day," says Remus, who, incidentally, James hates.

"I wasn't trying to impress anybody!" The rabbit makes another desperate bid for freedom; James catches him just in time. "Especially not her, she's a nosy goody-two-shoes who hates me and I hate her back, so there."

"Right," Remus says.

"Anyway," James goes on, "we'll get the stupid rabbit back to the stupid common room and show it to stupid Lily Evans, and if Sirius is back by then he can help us put it back— we'll get into McGonagall's office again and she'll never—"

A door opens right ahead of them. This happens to be the exact moment that the rabbit finally breaks free, bounds out of James' arms, and lands neatly at the feet of Professor McGonagall.

Remarkable timing she's got, that woman.

"Explain," she says.

"This is lucky, Professor!" James says. "We found this little guy hopping around the first floor, we figured he'd escaped from your office."

Her mouth thins in a dangerous sort of way. "Potter, I—"

"He's telling the truth, Professor," Remus pipes up, and James doesn't hate him anymore. "We saw that your office door was hanging open, we thought maybe Peeves had let him out..."

She might actually believe that, judging from the look on her face as she peers down at the rabbit, now nibbling curiously on the hem of her robes.