Four To The End (prev Shifting Lines) - Book One (Marauder Era)

Chapter Sixty-Nine - An Argument

"How come she complicated Evans's stupid thing but not mine?" James grumbled on their way out of class, his lion in his hands.

Lily was a little ways ahead of them and heard this. Her piece of wood had become a lovely flower. Petunia flower, so Remus knew what she planned to do with it. He hoped her sister would appreciate it... "Yours looks like you threw it through a woodchipper and it happened to become a lion," she sneered. "Plus we all know you put the underwear up in the rafters."

"Mine's massive compared to yours!" James snarled.

"You mean your ego? I agree." Lily looked at the wooden petunia flower in her hand. "Besides, mine's beautiful. Oh, Remus, yours is lovely!"

"Th--thanks," he mumbled. He was cradling a wooden cat. "It's for Mum, she really likes cats." He often wondered how it felt for her son to turn into a canine, but they hadn't ever really talked much about it. He knew his mother had a cat before--before the bite. Apparently after the lycanthropy took hold the cat kept trying to attack Remus so they had to give it away.

"So does McGonsie, she complimented yours for ages," Sirius said. "You know, there's something cat-like about her. I dunno what I did wrong, though. She only groaned when she saw mine, took points away, and made it disappear! Honestly, taking points away for doing the work correctly isn't exactly encouraging."

"That's because you made something extremely vulgar!" Lily said, cheeks going brilliantly pink.

"Is not!" Sirius complained, folding his arms. "It's just part of the body. Nothing vulgar about the human form."

"Oh, really!" Lily sounded disgusted, not that Remus blamed her. He couldn't believe Sirius had pulled a stunt like that in class. "What's yours supposed to be?" she asked Peter.

"It was supposed to be a bird but..." It was quite lumpy and looked more like a wooden piece of coal with a few sticky out bits.

"You've got a nice tail there though," Remus said.

"Th--that's supposed to be the beak!" he wailed. "C--compared to Colgate..."

Alice Colgate was standing near them, as was Cassandra Inkwood, and Colgate had a very nicely done sparrow in her hand. Inkwood's was the only one who deviated from nature by making a decent replica of a racing broom. "Next time you'll get it," Colgate said cheerfully. "Professor McGonagall said we'd be doing this again next week."

Peter just looked at the lump of wood, shaking his head. "Yeah b--but we're also gonna be bringing those to life! What's this going to do? Roll over?"

"I really hope you don't make the same thing you did today, then," James said with a grin to Sirius who grinned right back, both of them snickering.

"You're disgusting," Inkwood said.

"Thank you," Sirius replied with a bow.

*

At lunch Dedenne still seemed out of sorts, and Remus rather wished they had Defense that day so they could see how well their revenge worked. Either way, they knew it upset her and they spent half of lunch making bets over whether or not she got her clothing back though they all pretty much agreed that she didn't. Best of all there were rumors going around that a Slytherin did it. Apparently the portrait of a vampire guarding the entrance to her rooms said it was 'someone with a green and silver tie'. When they heard this, they all quietly gave each other low fives, congratulating Pete on the absolutely brilliant idea to use another house color for a disguise. Pete pretty much glowed for the remainder of the day.

They had gotten away with it.

That evening was Occlumency and he went to the fourth floor with trepidation. Last week hadn't gone well. He still had the throbbing ache of anger and betrayal (not that she really betrayed him, it just sort of felt that way). When he went in he could tell she felt as nervous as him which gave him a bit of relief.